“MV Queen of Prince Rupert” Aground in Gunboat Pass August 25, 1982
MV Queen of Prince Rupert - photo John Morris
Before you read the story, I must fill in a few details. My wife Karen and I were on McInnes Island lighthouse at the time of the incident. A week before the incident below we picked up the voice of the lightkeeper Henry Bergen at Dryad Point on our scanner in the house. In a loud and agitated voice he was calling “Queen of Prince Rupert! Queen of Prince Rupert! This is Dryad Point! Dryad Point! You are going the wrong way!” The reply came back that they were on a navigational exercise and they had everything in hand.
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Now the story from Harvey Humchitt1 who was on board the ship a week later . . .
It was a typical Friday in Bella Bella. My mother and brother and I had been preparing for a day trip to Port Hardy before the start of school. The trip to Port Hardy was on the “MV Queen of Prince Rupert” which took 6 or 7 hours from Bella Bella to Port Hardy. For me back then it was a holiday in itself. Continue reading “MV Queen of Prince Rupert” Aground in Gunboat Pass 1982→
For years the lighthouse has been a religious symbol, a beacon, guiding ships and/or people in the right direction. I accidently came across this song on Youtube called The Lighthouse sung by another group called The Happy Goodmans, but I liked the Elvis Presley version better. It is definitely not Rock and Roll but along the lines of his famous rendition of In the Ghetto, which is one of my favourites.
There’s a Lighthouse on the hillside That over looks life’s sea When I’m tossed it sends out a light That I might see And the light that shines in darkness now Will safely lead us o’er If it wasn’t for the Lighthouse My ship would be no more
Chorus: And I thank God for the Lighthouse I owe my life to Him For Jesus is the Lighthouse And from the rocks of sin He has shown a light around me That I could clearly see If it wasn’t for the Lighthouse (tell me) Where would this ship be?
Everybody that lives about us Says tear that Lighthouse down The big ships don’t sail this way anymore There’s no use of it standing round Then my mind goes back to that stormy night When just in time I saw the light Yes, the light from that old Lighthouse That stands up there on the hill
Repeat Chorus (x2)
If it wasn’t for the Lighthouse (tell me) Where would this ship be? [/spoiler]
I am posting this now because I again accidently stumbled upon this page: God’s lighthouse will help navigate our lives. Now, I am not very religiously inclined, but this text explains the song and the reason for the song better than I could:
God has a lighthouse that overlooks life’s sea. Some these days are lobbying to tear it down, especially the so-called politically correct.
They argue that the big ships of life’s important issues don’t sail that way anymore, and so it only serves to cause an offence and its position could be better occupied with other more important, useful and popular services.
Then my mind goes back to a stormy night, when just in time I observed its beams piercing through the darkness and I ask myself the question: If it hadn’t been for that lighthouse where would my ship be today?
I speak for many when I say, as the songwriter puts it: “I thank God for the lighthouse,” and “that we owe our life to Him, because you see Jesus is God’s lighthouse and He is still saving lives from the rocks of sin”.
Jesus said: “I am the light of the world.”
Unlike certain previous generations, we often obscure God’s lighthouse from our children’s view and wonder why they are breaking up on the rocks of crime and vice at an ever-alarming rate.
This lighthouse was not erected by the hands of men but by Almighty God Himself 2,000 years ago, not to be hid, but to serve as a guiding light enabling us to navigate through life’s journey.
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son Jesus who, on our behalf, took the punishment for our sin on the cross at Calvary preventing us from perishing in order that we may also receive everlasting life. So many around the world today can truly say that if it hadn’t been for that old lighthouse their ship would no longer be sailing life’s ocean today.
Thank God for the lighthouse shining as bright as ever. – this is Cornwall
From the theme of the text, it seems that some people are trying to tear down a lot of lighthouses, be they be spiritual or material. I for one am against tearing down both. They both are guiding lights for some people. Mind you, not all people believe in God or sail the seas, but for those that do, a lighthouse is a comfort.
The calm behind the lighthouse - photo G. Borgens
I know a lot of people thought the lighthouse that I tended at McInnes Island was a godsend when they had battled the stormy Northwest seas, and I mean this realistically, because when they came behind the lighthouse at McInnes Island they were in calm waters and felt safe.
So, enjoy the song, and if you wish to listen to different versions, then please check out the singers below – all available from Youtube.
Originally published in the January/February 2007 issue of Legion Magazine
We hadn’t expected gourmet Hungarian goulash served up on Royal Doulton china. But at the Cape Scott light station on the remote northwestern tip of Vancouver Island–a place that is normally engulfed in wet grey and storms–today is an exception. The sky is azure, there’s not a puff of wind, and Principal Keeper Harvey Humchitt and his partner Assistant Keeper Todd Maliszewski have house guests.
After sweating through 24 kilometres of squishy rain forest trails we’re no match for the fine linens and silver flatware spread impeccably before us on the dining table. The trek through the forest is the only way to get here without a boat or helicopter. After a couple of greeting barks from their dog Lady, Humchitt welcomes us to Cape Scott. Continue reading The Lightkeepers by Graham Chandler→
Cape Beale, . . . a lighthouse which later came to notice in a gallant and romantic rescue resulting from the actions of Mr. and Mrs. Paterson who kept the light from 1895 to 1908.
In December 1906, the United States barque Coloma left the Puget Sound with a cargo of lumber for Australia. There was a gale from the southeast and, cracking on to take advantage of this fair wind to clear the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the old wooden vessel sprang a leak when she encountered a heavy sea off Cape Flattery. With her decks awash, and the gear aloft carrying away as she pitched in an enormous swell, the Coloma was soon unmanageable and hoisted her ensign upside down in token of distress as she drifted down to leeward and the outlying reefs of Cape Beale.
In this position, and doubtless having let go her anchors to the bitter end, the barque was sighted from the lighthouse. The only chance of help lay in alerting the Quadra, then under the command of Captain Charles Hackett, which Paterson knew was lying at anchor in Bamfield Inlet, six miles away. The lifeboat, it will be recalled, was not on station at Bamfield until the following year. Telephone lines were down and the light keeper was unable to leave his foghorn which required constant attention. Although the trail was blocked by fallen trees and lay for much of the distance along a rocky shore. Mrs. Paterson at once insisted on making the journey herself. It was then night, and in darkness and dreadful weather she set off with a lantern and her dog, hoping against hope to be in time.
The plan was to get the news to James Mackay at Bamfield who would row off to the Quadra and raise the alarm. Arriving at the house physically exhausted, drenched to the skin and with her shoes and clothing ripped to pieces, it was found that Mackay was away from home repairing the telephone wires. Nothing daunted, Minnie Paterson and Mrs. Mackay themselves launched the boat and came alongside the Quadra as daylight came. Captain Hackett weighed anchor at once and the Quadra punched her way out of the Inlet against a heavy swell rolling in from the Pacific. Off Cape Beale the wreck was sighted, a boat was lowered under the command of the second officer Mr. James E. McDonald, and the distressed crew were recovered. No sooner had the boat returned to the Quadra than the derelict parted her cables and drove ashore to destruction. Mr. McDonald was promoted to chief officer shortly afterwards.
Immediately after her courageous action, and before the return of the Quadra with the shipwrecked men, Mrs. Paterson walked all the way back to the lighthouse. She had five children to look after and her husband was constantly at work in a period of rain and bad visibility. It was another week before communications were restored, and only then did the Paterson’s learn of the triumphal rescue which had resulted. Unfortunately, the results of Mrs. Paterson’s tremendous exertion soon made themselves apparent and she never entirely recovered, dying five years later.
Originally I had this article titled as Lighthouse Time referring to the time we were required to be at work on the station. Lighthouse Time-Keeping (leading up to automation) is a better phrase as it reflects punching the clock, etc. which we did not actually have do on a lighthouse. Someone was always there. You never left a lighthouse alone.
On the lighthouse we worked to get the job done. When it was done we could relax. We were on watch all the time.
In the early days (1800s – 1950s) the lighthouse was a one family station and if an assistant was required for heavy work then it was up to the keeper to hire a person from the local community using his own wages to pay the person. The keepers hours of duty were long and hard and were broken only when the wife was free to help out. Two man and/or family stations were only on very isolated stations with keepers on duty approximately twelve hour shifts but usually longer. Actually, at that time, no shifts were set down on paper – the station had to be manned no matter what.
In the 1950s to 1970s the stations with more duties, equipment, or isolation had an extra man so there were one-, two- and three-man stations. These people were on duty at differing hours. A one-man station required the keeper to sometimes sleep in the engine/fog alarm room when heavy fog was prevalent for days on end. In the mid 1960s the two-man stations had a shift time of twelve hours each man and three-man stations eight hours each. The early 1970s saw some automated equipment installed and most three-man stations reduced to two-man and a susequent increase in the number of hours on duty without an increase in pay.
Late 1970s brought more talk of automation, more equipment, especially station monitoring equipment for automation, but no increase in the keeper’s pay. In fact the first closing of some stations was started, automation equipment was put in place and keepers were ignored.
Finally by the mid 1980s a job description was given to the lighthouse keepers and this would be what their wages were based on – more duties, more pay.
Keepers were requested to submit a list of the duties they performed and the time involved. But only Coast Guard related work was to be on the list. All the extra work the lightkeeper did was not recorded – jobs such as weather reporting, sea water samples, search and rescue, bird and animal surveys, pollution watch, radio watch, etc. This, according to the Coast Guard was not the job of a lighthouse keeper.
Again in the mid 1980s, automation in Ottawa computers and on the lights designated that we had to have hours of work laid down. Up to that time we were paid a yearly wage divided by the number of government paydays in a year (52). This gave us our bi-monthly wage. Divided by the number of hours we were on duty (for seven days a week you must remember), this worked out to very much less than the minimum wage at the time. Finally the government worked out that we would all have an eight hour shift each, during daylight hours and they worked it out this way:
As you can see the by the first table the shifts were 8 hours long in two periods as we were supposed to ignore the station during our one hour break at lunch and breakfast and supper.
The second table shows that weather reports did not fit into this shift pattern at lunchtime.
The third table shows the extra quarter hour (or half hour, depending on the intensity of weather) we used to make the observations and record all afterwards. The result was a normal nine- to ten-hour day but we were only listed as working eight.
What the government did not include was overtime! We had an eight hour shift to work. Finished! They did not consider the times when we were phone in the night for weather reports, where one had to dress, go outside, read the barograph and write-up the weather; or the nights where we baby-sat a boat in distress because Coast Guard radio was tied up with so many incidents because of bad weather; or the nights the engines shut down because of bad fuel delivered to us; or the time the main light blew out twice in a row; or the time the battery went dead on their automatic engines and shut down the station (the battery controlled the control panel) – I can list hundreds of times we worked through the nights, but all on an eight hour shift!
Pay Stub
You will notice on the pay stub (left) the highlighted number 56 under “Hours of Work”. This is eight hours a day for seven days (8 hours X 7 days = 56 hours). You can also see by the shift chart that daylight hours (which were imposed to stop us collecting shift differential1) were an impossibility unless you were working in the summer above the Arctic Circle!
But, there was a good side. We worked as we wished. No office supervisor and no daily logging in and out. We could work twelve hours here and then go fishing for four hours, always mindful of the radio, the weather, engines, fog, and the light. We could work a morning shift and spend the next eight hours unloading a supply ship (no overtime) and then hit the sack. Next day we could take it easy! Only the weather reports at 3AM , 6AM, 9AM, Noon, etc.
But then the Coast Guard decided that we had to report exactly what we were doing! They issued us with log books and a new set of rules and we were supposed to log everything we did during our shift!
Well we filled the books with every little detail we performed. Contrary to our job description we included all the local, marine, synoptic, special and extra weathers. All the radio contacts, all the ship contacts, all the jobs done and listed every minute of the shift. We filled reams of books and sent them into the office every month. It didn’t help us, didn’t help them, but gave us an extra entry in the logbook “0900-0910 Filling out logbook”!
Present day (November 2006) the Coast Guard removed most of the foghorns (no monitoring), lowered or changed the intensity of the lights, removed range lights, removed radio beacons and their towers, removed weather equipment such as barometers, wind recorders, etc., and removed from the lightkeepers duties most weather reporting details so that they have become glorified groundskeepers.
But rest assured, as long as the government lets them remain on duty, they will come to your assistance with a radioed weather report, a can of gas or a friendly hello. God Bless all lighthousekeepers!
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FOOTNOTES:
1Shift Differential – Additional pay for work regularly performed outside normal daytime hours, usually defined as before &AM and after 6PM.
McInnes with weather instruments (lower half) – photo John Coldwell
One of the duties on most of the lighthouse stations, and especially on McInnes Island, up to 2003, was the reporting of local weather (weather visible in the immediate area of the station) to Environment Canada (EC) – earlier called the Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) – for re-broadcast to boaters, pilots and climatologists.
Extreme Tendency November 05, 1988 – scan Glenn Borgens
Every three hours during the day, starting at around three o’clock in the morning we would collect the information on sky condition, visibilty, wind speed and direction, rain/snowfall, wet and dry bulb temperatures plus maximum and minimum temperatures, station pressure and tendency (whether pressure was rising or falling and how rapidly), and sea and swell height. This was then recorded on AES forms or in a notebook depending on the station. Not all stations reported or had the instruments for all observations. These records were forwarded to AES every month along with a Climate Summary for the month. Continue reading Weather Observing – a Large Part of the Job→
Well, in the beginning was the Lightkeeper’s Voice, Fog Bell, Sirens, Dynamite, Cannons and other assorted methods, and then came the Hand Horn.
Powers Brothers Hand Horn - photo Chris MillsLothrop Hand Horn - photo Chris Mills
First of all was the Powers Brothers Hand Horn used in the days before mechanical equipment. Many were used up until the early 1950s. and were still kept on station in case of emergencies well into the 1990s. The horn was activated when a vessel required it, usually by blowing its own horn any time of day or night, occasionally having to wake the keeper with more than one blast. Another smaller version was this Lothrop Hand Horn (right)
New HCF Funding Available for Fundy Shore Lighthouses
Date sent: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:13:05 +0000
HCF Funding Available for Fundy Shore Lighthouses
Ottawa, ON, April 24, 2012 – The Heritage Canada Foundation (HCF) is pleased to announce the availability of heritage grant funding for the repair and conservation of historic lighthouses along Nova Scotia’s Fundy Shore, in the counties of Digby, Annapolis and Kings. Funding will come from HCF’s Runciman Endowment Fund for Heritage Conservation, created with the assistance of a generous bequest.
HCF will consider funding requests from community groups and organizations seeking one-time financial support for repair and heritage conservation work at historic lighthouses in the three named counties.
