By Hank Nuwer, Cordova Times columnist
Few occupations were more beset with drudgery, isolation and loneliness than the occupation of a lighthouse keeper in Alaska.
For this column, I thought I would write about the early history of lighthouses in Alaska.
Buoys first appeared on the territory’s waters in 1884. However, it was not until 1899 that the lighthouse board approved a bill by Sen. Addison G. Foster of Washington state to appropriate $300,000 to construct lighthouses along Alaskan waters. By that time an estimated 35,000 persons came or went annually between Alaska and Puget Sound.
Other evidence points to 1901 as the birth of lighthouses in the state. Officials announced that “the plans and drawings for the first lighthouses to be built in Alaska have been forwarded to the department at Washington from (Portland),” according to the Seattle Star on April 18, 1901,
The immediate effect was to reduce somewhat exorbitant freight shipping costs, as well as to persuade steamship companies to build additional liners, according to the Daily Alaskan of Dec. 29, 1899.
Prior to 1908, lighthouse crews hailed from the Oregon-Washington district. In 1908, however, following a federal bill passed by the U.S. Senate, Alaska became a separate lighthouse district with its own inspector, headquarters and a depot at Ketchikan. At the same time, Hawaii and Porto Rico received individual lighthouse districts.
Experts determined Alaskan lighthouses could be more efficiently run by lighthouse boards situated on its own coast.
“Considerable time is lost in traveling between Portland and Alaska each year,” noted the Oregonian, a Portland newspaper.
The changeover to an Alaska-based headquarters took about two years (1910) to achieve. Progress was steady, if slow. In 1910 there were 160 aids to navigation, including 37 lights.
The lighthouse board in 1911 pleaded for relaxed civil service rules for staffing Alaska coast lighthouses. Alaska’s sparse population and its very immensity made it next to impossible to keep every lighthouse staffed.
When keeper J. Reagan left his lighthouse post in 1909 at St. Mary’s Island in Southeastern Alaska to take his ill wife for medical assistance, he had much explaining to offer when he was absent without leave from his post.
Over time, however, lighthouse keepers needed special skills. Modern technology demanded that lighthouse keepers possess the skills of an engineer, manning alone (or with a fellow keeper), the fog signal apparatus, switchboards, code machines and synchronizing locks to send radio signals.
Most lighthouse personnel toiled in anonymity. I have been able to identify a few individuals by name, however.
John W (Jack) Tyacke hailed originally from Ord, Nebraska. His parents homesteaded and his mother gave birth to him in 1833. He worked variously as a cook, bricklayer, welder and farmer. For some five years, he raised and raced horses. His remote coastal lighthouse was 20 miles from Haines.
A keeper at Scotch Cape on the Alaska Peninsula named Ludescher nearly froze to death when he ventured outside the lighthouse during a snowstorm with hurricane winds. His dog dragged him back to his home and saved his life in 1911.
Another “salty dog” was Captain William S. Hamilton, a brawny immigrant from Scotland, who assumed lighthouse duties after a life at sea aboard the three-masted schooner Lottie Carson. Upon retirement, he served as a bringer of supplies to a lighthouse at Point Fermin before becoming a keeper himself at the “Five Fingers” lighthouse near Juneau.
Lighthouse keeper Arthur Frey, a Kentuckian by birth, patrolled the lighthouse on Sentinel Island in Alaska. He was on duty the night in 1918 when the British liner Princess Sophia sunk in fog and 400 persons perished in frigid waters.
During the Roaring Twenties, the lighthouse keeper on Unimak Island was J. B. Robinson. Apparently a trusting, naïve sort, Robinson went to Seattle on a vacation from duties in 1925 and was swindled out of his $10,000 savings by two con men, according to the Kusko Times of Sept. 12, 1925.
The Cordova Times in 1915 published an interview with the Commissioner of Lighthouses G. R. Putnam who worked out of an office in Washington, D.C.
Putnam said that he saw a need for additional lighthouse structures as shipping expanded in Alaska and wider routes were required for navigation. Most urgently needed were lights, buoys and beacons to keep coastal traffic safe. The main lighted steamship route in 1915 was from Seattle to Skagway throughout an inside passage. Other lighted routes were found in Cook Inlet and at Prince William Sound.
By 1915, according to Phillips, Alaska possessed 329 ships-at-sea aids, which included 111 lights. Some lights were automatic gas-powered and required no crews.
Phillips reported a lighthouse and fog signal stations at Unimak Island, which contained a pass serving as a gateway for steamers through the Unalaska Peninsula from the North Pacific to the Bering Sea.
Lightkeeper W. A. Phillips was in charge of two crews of three men, each stationed at the lighthouse off Unimak Island in 1915. No other residents at that time inhabited the island.
The government allowed lighthouse keepers some time off only after serving three years. Not until 1918 could lightkeeper Phillips take his vacation. His destination of choice was Cordova, where The Weekly Alaska Citizen did an article on the visiting keeper in 1918.
Phillips told an interviewer that loneliness is a common malady for persons of his profession. Visitors were rare. Mail deliveries were every three months. No wireless or cable connected him to “the outside world,” he said.
The 21-year-old assistant keeper of the Scotch Cap lighthouse at Unalaska, became hospitalized following a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1908 while vacationing in Oregon. Fred L. Larson, a Norwegian immigrant, survived, however.
Hank Nuwer is an adjunct journalism professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.