Lighthouse Presentation on Feb. 10

For anyone in the NH Seacoast region -- I'll be speaking about local lighthouses at the North Hampton Public Library this Wednesday evening, February 10, at 7 p.m. Details are on the library's web site at www.nhplib.org.

Photo of the Day: Plum Island Lighthouse, Massachusetts

Taken on a fall afternoon a few years ago, with really beautiful light on the lighthouse and garden.

Photo of the Day: Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse, New Hampshire

Took this at sunset last June. The color of the sky was really unusual.

Photo of the Day: Camden Harbor, Maine, from Mount Battie

Camden Harbor is my pick as the most beautiful harbor in Maine, and the view of it from the top of Mount Battie is spectacular. If you look really closely at Curtis Island on the upper left, on the left side of the island you can see Curtis Island Lighthouse and the keeper's house.

Click here for more on Curtis Island Lighthouse.

Herbert Spinney - Lighthouse Keeper and Naturalist

Left: Keeper Herbert Spinney and his family at Seguin Island, Maine. Courtesy of the Friends of Seguin Island.

A 1904 Boston Globe article profiled Herbert Spinney, who had been an assistant keeper at Seguin Light Station in Maine beginning in 1893 and was principal keeper from 1903 to 1907.

Spinney, who was a native of nearby Georgetown, also served as president of the Maine Ornithological Society. He had collected and mounted birds since boyhood, and he also collected birds’ eggs, butterflies, minerals, and corals. He always carried a camera, and he developed and printed his own photos. Spinney’s collection filled much of the dwelling’s wall space from floor to ceiling.

This makeshift museum drew increasing numbers of visitors to the island, and eventually the keeper began charging an admission fee of a dime to keep the crowds more manageable. Included in the collection was a stuffed monkey, and a visitor once asked the keeper if he had shot the monkey on the island. “No madam,” replied Spinney, “I didn’t, but I’ve seen little monkeys on this island that I should like to shoot.”

Many of the birds Spinney collected were found dead after flying into the lantern glass of the tower. On one memorable morning, Spinney found 275 birds dead around the lighthouse. Spinney kept a journal of his observations; here’s the entry for September 3, 1899:

Midnight, wind northwest, very dark, not a star to be seen; the air so impregnated with smoke as to make my throat smart in breathing; at this hour I came on duty, the birds were flying around the light; on going into the lantern I found about 75 birds on the outside; pine warblers, black and white yellow throats, oven birds, two hermit thrushes and one yellow-bellied flycatcher; all seemed to alight on the glass as fast as they appeared; very few seen flying around the light.

At 3 a.m. came a light shower, which seemed to check the flight. Those on the lantern remained until morning. All the mortality occurred with the yellow throats, 10 of this species being found dead. This seems odd, as I could hear many birds strike the dome of the lantern, the concussion when they struck sounding like a body of several hundred pounds weight.

Click here for more history of Seguin Lighthouse.

Trade Winds

A nicely done lighthouse-related animated film.

World's Shortest Keeper?

This is one of my all-time favorite photos of a lighthouse keeper. The man on the left is Charles H. Hinckley, keeper of the Bishop and Clerks Lighthouse off Hyannis on Cape Cod 1892-1919. Hinckley, who was 4 feet 9 inches (or 4 feet 6 inches in his stocking feet, according to one account), has been called the shortest lighthouse keeper in the world.

With Hinckley in this photo is local ferry captain Walter Carney (6'7") of Hyannisport. Hinckley referred to himself and Carney as the "long and short of the service."

In 1909, the magazine Along the Coast quoted Hinckley:

There ain't a great deal of me so far as height goes but I am all right from my feet up. I've laid many a man bigger than me on his back if I do say it myself.

You can read more about Hinckley and Bishop and Clerks Lighthouse on my website.