Chatham Light Turns 200

by Alan Pollock

            CHATHAM — The next time you look at Chatham Light, consider this: the beacons on top have winked at passing mariners some 536 million times—give or take a few hundred thousand—but that’s only since the twin lights were replaced by a single rotating beacon in 1923.  Mariners have been kept safe by the lights at Chatham for 200 years, and this Saturday the Coast Guard will observe the landmark’s bicentennial with an open house at the present lighthouse, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.            

Cape’s Second Lighthouse  

          After federal officials built Highland Light in Truro, it was clear that the next lighthouse needed to be built at the southeastern end of the Cape, to guide mariners on their way around the Cape and Nantucket Sound.  So in 1808, the government completed twin wooden lighthouses at Chatham.  At the time, all lighthouse beacons were fixed white lights, so twin lights were needed to distinguish Chatham Light from the beacon in Truro.

            Much to the dismay of the contractor hired for the job, there were no boulders to be found on the Lower Cape to be used in construction of the lighthouses, and so octagonal wooden structures were chosen.  They were placed on wooden skids so they could be moved, allowing them to serve as range lights that would show mariners the current location of the shifting harbor entrance.  Together with the lighthouses, the contractor was to build a three-room keeper’s house, 17 feet by 26 feet in size. 

            By appointment of President Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Nye became the first keeper of the lighthouses, each of which had six feeble oil lamps outfitted with parabolic reflectors.

            As chronicled by maritime historian Admont Clark in 1989, Nye was succeeded by Joseph Loveland and then Samuel Stinson of Eastham, who left his post after his second reprimand by the district superintendent of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, for neglect of duty.  Loveland likely left in an angry state, since the government declined to reimburse him for the unauthorized addition he built on the keeper’s house.

            In 1841, a government inspector deemed the 33-year-old wooden towers unsafe in high winds, thanks to a lack of maintenance.  The inspector also noted that the beacons were becoming less bright, apparently because the design was faulty and because keepers had been polishing the reflectors with too much vigor, wearing away their thin silver coating.  The upkeep of the lights in Chatham was severely lacking, the inspector concluded.

            Winslow Lewis, the designer of the lamp system, was awarded a large, seven-year government contract to maintain the beacons around the U.S., on the condition that he make them more oil-efficient and brighter.  Though the new lamps did use less oil, there was apparently never any test of their light output.  Still, the government approved of Lewis’ job, renewing his contract for another seven years, during which time he made a princely profit, and outfitted many towers which soon collapsed because of poor workmanship. 

Brick Towers

            Later that year, two new towers were built to replace the wooden ones.  These towers were made of brick, and were located behind the original ones, farther away from the eroding cliff.  These lighthouses had nine lamps each, with much larger reflectors.  A local fisherman, Collins Howes, who had lost a leg in a fishing accident, was named keeper of the new lights.  His stint as keeper ended four years later when James K. Polk was elected president, since lighthouse keepers at the time were political appointees.

            Howes was succeeded by Simeon Nickerson, who died three years after his appointment.  Howes tried without success to get reinstated, but the appointment was given to the widow, Angeline Nickerson, who had worked alongside her husband and knew how to maintain the lighthouses well. 

            No amount of careful maintenance could save the lighthouses from the advancing sea, though.  In the 1860s, the twin sisters were quite distant from the shore, with large properties between them and the beach.  But a fierce storm broke through the barrier beach in 1870, and rapid erosion ensued.  Capt. Josiah Hardy, who was appointed keeper in 1872, kept careful measurements of the advancing cliff.  By 1874, the water was 190 feet from the lighthouse, and less than three years later, only 95 feet of bluff remained.  By 1877, the ocean was less than 50 feet away.  Two years later, the south tower slid into the harbor, followed by the keeper’s house and the north tower.

            Anticipating the problem, the government built two new lighthouses well back from the earlier ones, using a new design: brick sheathed in curved cast iron plates.  By now, the new Chatham twin sisters were equipped with powerful lanterns with Fresnel lenses.  The new lighthouses were commissioned in 1877. 

Twins Separated

            Keeper Hardy moved into the new twin lighthouses with his family, having salvaged the lenses from the old twins before their decommissioning.  Soon, those lanterns were converted to allow them to burn kerosene instead of lard oil.

            Hardy is remembered not only as a fine lighthouse keeper, but as one of the town’s most important chroniclers of the time.  His lighthouse logbook contained not only the obligatory information on the weather and passing ships, but snippets of local and national news.  The pages of his book record the arrival of the railroad in Chatham, and the assassination of President Garfield in 1881. 

            In 1923, crews dismantled the north tower of the twin lighthouses, moving it to Nauset Beach, where it replaced the old Three Sisters lighthouses.  It remains there today as Nauset Light, though it had to be moved away from an eroding cliff in 1996.  Aside from its red and white paint job and its smaller, black superstructure, it remains Chatham Light’s twin.

            Until 1969, Chatham Light and Nauset Light had identical superstructures enclosing their lanterns.  But in that year, the top was removed from Chatham Light, and replaced with the larger, metallic superstructure seen on the lighthouse today.  The change was necessary to make room for the modern, 2.8 million candlepower aerobeacon it houses.  The old superstructure and Fresnel lens can still be seen on the grounds of the Chatham Historical Society’s Atwood House Museum. 

Adopted by the Auxiliary

            With the advent of LORAN and GPS, visual aids to navigation like lighthouses play a much less important role in keeping vessels safe, but Chatham Light is still a useful landmark for boaters.  Particularly since the U.S. Lighthouse Service became part of the Coast Guard in 1939, the need for full-time, dedicated lighthouse keepers has diminished. 

            Chatham Light was without a full-time keeper for around 20 years, until the local flotilla of the Coast Guard Auxiliary “adopted” the lighthouse in 1993.  Since that time, auxiliarists have served as keepers, regularly inspecting the tower and the lantern, and calling in the Coast Guard’s Aids to Navigation Team—affectionately known as ANTs—when major maintenance is needed.

            The current keeper, auxiliarist Jeff Davis, has been keeper since 2000.  Though he’s 77, Davis still takes care of the painting around the base of the tower and in the anteroom, and lately spends time chasing persistent leaks inside the tower.  Rainwater, particularly during high winds, tends to enter the tower in several locations, and there is some rust of some of the interior steel structures.  But in all, the lighthouse is in good structural shape.  It will certainly need an overhaul before the tricentennial celebration, Davis quipped.

            In addition to its value as an aid to navigation, the lighthouse has the distinction of being the town’s most recognizable landmark, and an important tourist attraction.  Last year, the Coast Guard Auxiliary brought its 50,000^th visitor through the lighthouse.  Most have no problem climbing up to the lantern room, though some become frightened when it’s time to come down, Davis said.  Young children and adults don’t seem to have a problem.  “The age for people freaking out seems to be between seven and eight,” he said.

            Over the years, Davis and his colleagues have fielded plenty of interesting questions about Chatham Light, and can answer most without hesitation.  There are 44 steps to the oil deck and another eight steps up to the lantern room.  The light is 48 feet above the ground, and 80 feet above sea level, and the beam is visible far out to sea, theoretically 27.6 miles away (though, owing to the curvature of the earth, an observer would have to be 400 feet in the air to see the flash). 

            Prompted by a line in a book about summer visitors by local author Marcia Monbleau, one visitor asked her tour guide how the Coast Guard goes about taking down the lighthouse during the winter.

            “I pointed to the ribs on the outside, and said, what we do is, we take each section of the lighthouse and slide it down into the one below it,” collapsing the lighthouse like a transistor radio antenna, Davis said.  “I swear she would’ve believed me, but about 30 seconds later, I told her the truth.”

            On Saturday, June 21, an invitation-only ceremony will be held to mark the lighthouse’s bicentennial, with town dignitaries and Coast Guard officials expected to attend.  A public open house will take place between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., with guided tours of the lighthouse.  In case of rain, the open house will take place Sunday at the same time.

6/19/08