The bottom forty feet of the tower are solid granite, save for a central space that served as a cistern. First, a little background: Sager grew up in Malden, where he met and married his high school sweetheart. By 13 he was a paper boy, and on Saturday mornings he helped his. The 300-year-old Boston Light, the countrys first lighthouse, is located on Little Brewster Island in the Boston Harbor. A new, forty-nine-foot-tall granite tower with an octagonal wrought-iron lantern was built by Colonel Seward Merrill for $3,406.65 in 1831. }Customer Service. See Photos. She is shaking a good three feet each way as I write. And, with that, the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow was born. At first, Boon Island was barely able to attract and retain a keeper. We always find the answers by asking how they did it back in the day. The need for a beacon at the ledge was not lost on lighthouse inspector I.W.P. The wind reached nearly 100 miles per hour and stirred up waves that dashed against the dwelling and tower, coating them in thick layers of ice. But the Boston philanthropist was disappointed to learn. He imagines his family gathering there on sultry summer nights, the reflection of a full moon dazzling like diamonds on the Atlantic. He also envisions it as a place where representatives of societies that wage war against each other, that commit unspeakable atrocities, can sit across from each other and find common ground. The identity of the new owner was soon revealed to be Bobby Sager, a Boston philanthropist and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Polaroid. Four keepers, a head keeper and three assistant keepers were initially assigned to the new lighthouse, and two double-dwellings were built at Cohasset to provide shore accommodations for the keepers and their families. It lets the federal government give away lighthouses to qualifying local governments, non-profits, or community development organizations. To find the money, he and his wife mortgaged their house, as did his mom, to help them out. To date, 82 lighthouses have been transferred to public entities and nonprofits, and 66 have been sold for $8.2 million total. No one in my family lives in the Scituate harbor anymore, and its morphed from a fishing town to a summer vacation spot for people from Boston. Second Assistant: Samuel Tobey (1855 1856), Josiah Tobey Jr. (1856 1859), John S. Baker (1859), Enos Gray (1859 1861), S. Tobey (1861 1864), George E. Bridges (1864 1865), Charles Ramsdell (1865 1868), Samuel R. McLorn (1868), Luther Amazeen (1868 1870), Nathan White, Jr. (1870 1874), Edwin J. Hobbs (1874 1876), David R. Grogan (1876 1878), George O. Leavitt (1878 1880), Paschal Fernald (1880 1881), Orrin M. Lamprey (1881 1885), William C. Williams (1885 1886), James Burke (1886 1888), Leonidas H. Sawyer (1888 1890), Charles W. Torry (1890), Walter S. Amee (1891 1893), William M. Brooks (1893), Alvah J. Toby (1893 1894), James Hawe (1894), Joseph A. Pruett (1894 1896), Charles S. Williams (1896 1897), Meshach M. Seaward (1897 1900), Merton E. Tolman (1900), Henry C. Neal (1900 1902), Frank L. Peabbles (1902), Leroy L. Myers (1902), James R. Faulkingham (1902 1903), William T. Stevens (1903 1904), Mitchell Blackwood (1905), William Henry Burns (1905 1907), Charles Whitten Allen (1907 1911), Fuller E. Larrabee (1912 1913), Charles A. Radley (1913), Albert Staples (1914 at least 1915), Roscoe M. Chandler (1916 1917), Harry M. Kelley (1917 1919), George E. Woodward (1919 1920), Arthur E. Ginn (at least 1921), Eugene L. Coleman (1923 1924), Myron L. Wilson (1924 1925), Andrew H. Kennedy (1925 1928), Fred C. Batty (1930), Frank M. Rumery (1930 ), Howard W. Gray (1932 1934), Hoyt P. Smith (1935 1936), Harry H. McClure (1936 1937), Henry S. Brown (1937 at least 1941), Calvin Dolby (1944 1945), Russell G. Carpenter (at least 1945), Clifford Gustavson (at least 1947), Charles Kendrick Capon (1951 1953), Harold L. Roberts (1956), Ron Schultz (1959). Interested entities were given two months to submit a letter of interest expressing their desire to submit an application for ownership. When no qualified custodian was found, an online auction for the lighthouse was opened on May 14, 2014. Sri Lanka. Hes says hes planning to open it up for occasional tours, and that the response has been really good. And, unless a lighthouse is decommissioned, the Coast Guard must be granted access to keep all the automated lights shining for those few mariners still looking for a guiding light. He says he didnt have any solid reason for buying it, just that same deep-seated nostalgia and a long-standing but loose family tie. It was kind of redundant.. Think not that I will ever flinch from my post, though the waves should gain the mastery for which they are so incessantly striving. . Heceta Head, Oregon, is among the lighthouses that are open for tours or stays. The tower itself and its fourteen windows, which were sealed shut, were leaky. Arriving, we balance on periwinkles and barnacles to step from the dinghy onto a jetty, tie up to a piling, and walk 40 feet on slippery rocks to the base of the lighthouse. Tower closed. an immediate left onto Government Island where you will see the lantern room replica. A little while after thatsame storm, Hutch put the teapot on the stove to get the tea hot, and he got up to go to the bathroom andthe sea took bathroom and all and took it all out back on the high rocksI was glad to get off that place. She spent a summer visiting lights along the eastern seaboard. Current Address: KVFV Alaminos Dr, Santa Clarita, CA. Summer Street and then right on Border Street. 12,800 In 2014, Polaroid Chairman "Bobby" Sager won the bid for Minot's Ledge . It offers stair-climbing tours in summer, and other months as staffing and conditions allow. Vandals subsequently entered the lighthouse and smashed sections of the second-order lens. The ladder up from sea level, Graves Light, built in 1905. In 2000, hed had enough. It hits deeper, because it draws back to when you could get lost in the ocean, when you needed a beacon to bring you home. Bobby Sager Team Sager | Sager Family Foundation Boston, Massachusetts, United States 493 followers 448 connections Join to connect Sager Family Foundation Yale University Experience. Keeper Williams and his assistants saved the six crewmembers, though afterward, the keepers and the crew were almost equally incapacitated by exposure. In 1919, Keeper Harry Smith and his two assistants rescued seven men aboard the schooner Hazel E. Ritcey, after it struck a rock and sank near the island. Sign Up. He plans to knock down one ceiling to combine two floors into one, transforming it into a panoramic conference room sort of a majestic aquatic meeting space. On a windy January afternoon, our boat covers the nine miles from Boston Harbor Shipyard & Marina to its offshore mooring in a swift 35 minutes, plunging five feet down and back up over waves that look like rolling hills in Vermont. At our return to the house found all our water gone and all my turnips and cabage washt away and my walls all Down. When youre out here, the whole world stops, as far as youre concerned, says Waller. In addition, a supply shed, measuring twelve by twenty feet, and a brick oil house were erected on the island. Not long afterward, the station was automated, and the damaged dwelling was burned in 1981. Since purchasing the lighthouse at a government auction seven years ago, Dave. The local brewery makes a Minot Light, Thoreau wrote about it, and its been used in ads for Cape Cod Cranberries and American Tobacco cigarettes. He can be reached at, the government had auctioned it off in 2014. But who owns the thing? A Coast Guard motorboat from Allerton finally reached the scene and picked up all of the men, who were three miles past the lighthouse at this point and unable to return to the mainland due to the wind. We cut off the cabin and converted it into a barge to haul heavy materials out to Graves, says Waller, referring to the historic lighthouse he owns. The first man offered the position refused. Crossing back over the bridge, we make our way up: five spiral clangy metal flights; past a bunk room, the keepers quarters, and a third-floor kitchen; and to the lantern room. 3rd The 2000 National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act was established to maintain these historic structures, saving many, including Graves. A bell-buoy was placed on Boon Island Ledge, about three miles east of Boon Island, starting in 1858 to mark this navigational hazard. First Assistant: Christopher C. Littlefield (1854), George G. Bowden (1854 1855), Charles H. Tobey (1855 1859), William Baker (1859), Josiah Tobey, Jr. (1859 1861), Calvin Gray (1861 1866), George H. Yeaton (1866 1867), John W. Card (1867 1873), Leander White (1874 1878), David R. Grogan (1878 1880), George O. Leavitt (1880 1881), Paschal Fernald (1881 1885), Orrin M. Lamprey (1885 1886), William C. Williams (1886 1888), James Burke (1888 1890), Charles W. Torry (1890 1893), William M. Brooks (1893 1897), Charles S. Williams (1897 1905), William T. Stevens (1905), Mitchell Blackwood (1905 1911), Charles W. Allen (1911 1913), Fuller E. Larrabee (1913), Roger P. Philbrick (1913 1917), Roscoe M. Chandler (1917 1919), Harry M. Kelley (1919 at least 1921), Eugene L. Coleman (1924 1930), Fred C. Batty (1930 1932), Benjamin Stockbridge (at least 1935), Hoyt P. Smith (1936 1937), Harry H. McClure (1937 1940), George A. McKenney (1940 1942), Jack McCoe (1944 1945), Thomas J. Guice (at least 1945), Robert Adams (at least 1947), Gordon B. Kenny (1951 1952), Charles Eaton (1962 1965), August Pfister (1967 1968). A few years ago, the mooring was ripped out of the ocean floor by a gale, and a breaker dragged Dave Wallers boat, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter he bought used, into the shoal below the lighthouse. The stone dwelling designed for two keepers is occupied by three, two of whom have families. When I reach Snowman at her home base in the Boston suburb of Weymouth, she tells me, Were seeing the most erosion down in the valley in between them. Writer, Editor, Skier. I have made a calculation and find that what would make me comfortable, Oliver wrote, would amount to nearly five hundred dollars [per year]also the wages of a Man and Boy would be thirty dollars a month. I was scared out in that placeIt was an awful life., On August 20, 1932, a newspaper printed a letter about the life of a keeper at Boon Island. That summer, they posted a notice of availability. The identity of the new owner was soon revealed to be Bobby Sager, a Boston philanthropist and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Polaroid. Their mission was to explore the seabed for the remains of the first Minots Ledge Lighthouse that collapsed in 1851. A crew of Portuguese fishermen swore they saw a figure hanging on to an outer ladder shouting at them in their own language to keep away, and many local fishermen have reported hearing moans and cries for help coming from the base of the lighthouse. This light is best viewed from the water, though distant views are possible At this time, the second-order lens was dismantled and placed in storage in the tower, and a third-order Fresnel lens was installed. No. 5.25 The same guy who purchases a meteorite that fell from the heavens in Ghana and places it in a little red wagon in his living quarters. Next summer Waller, who has been awarded by the American Lighthouse Foundation for his work in preservation, will finally finish the near unimaginable with the installation of a rare antique first-order Fresnel lens with the refracting glass once commonly used to intensify light for mariners. 2 which houses part of a third-order Fresnel lens used in the lighthouse can be seen at Government Island in Cohasset. Christopher Sager, Age 41. aka Chris Sager. There were two Coast Guard keepers on the island when the storm hit, tossing boulders across the island. The island is now owned by philanthropist and lighthouse enthusiast Bobby Sager. Grounds/tower closed. In December 2014, just months after acquiring the lighthouse, Girard sold the property to Boon Island LLC for $119,673. Free shipping for many products! But what happens when the king dies? Big Bay Point Lighthouse, a B and B looking out from the cliffs of Lake Superior, Michigan. The flashes within a group were two seconds apart, while the groups of flashes were separated by five seconds of darkness. White Shoal Light, Lake Michigan With an asking bid of $15,000, this delightful candy cane of a lighthouse has been made famous for its representation on the "Save Our Lights . Undaunted, Captain Alexander began anew. Artist, writers, and poets, from Marianne Moore to James Taylor, have canonized lighthouses. They try to put them in the hands of groups that will keep them open to the public, but sometimes, like in Minots case, no public entity wants the responsibility. Ive been knocked down by it on the wharf beside the light, and opening a window to look out more than halfway [65 feet] up the tower, Ive had as much as three buckets-full dashed in my face.. Lighthouse fanatics have reached out to tell him theyre glad hes renovating it, and that they can see the good parts of private ownership. 3. We have come to Graves Light Station on a good day. from Minot. The Coast Guard, once mandated by Congress to staff and operate Boston Light permanently, has greenlit a search for a new owner through the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. Although William C. Williams remained at Boon Island longer than any other keeper, his mind was not immune from the effects of the storms that often raked the island: The 1888 Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board described the structures at the station. Many link the name Boon Island to the wrecks of the trading vessel. Order Its 36 degrees out, and the sweeping waves splashing up make the scene even more surreal. Along the way, hes fostered micro-lending in Third World countries, befriended the Dalai Lama (A great sense of humor), sat with Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa, and replaced the ragtag soccer balls used by African children with brand-new indestructible yellow ones. Past Addresses: See available information. A keeper would clean the light, and anything short of meticulous was unforgivable. The catch? Thats what makes me optimistic that the right entity is out there to work that kind of magic on Boston Light. She and some lighthouse preservationists hope Boston Light will go to the National Park Service, especially since the station is located within the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park Area, but theres no telling what will happen over the next year or two. On November 11, 1818, Keeper Grover sent a letter to Collector Dearborn that included the following: I have just been informed that I am dead, but I am yet alive and hope to live to see those people brought to justice for making the report; one of the three is the man that has sent you his recommendation. Last summer we went back and piled cousins and aunts into a rented house. 4th Were climbing up this? I ask, as if its not obvious. Eventually, they will probably divest of almost every lighthouse property, with a few exceptions., DEntremont predicts that in 50 years only a small number of lighthouses, if any, will still be used for any navigation. At the time it was the most anyone had paid for a lighthouse. Outside's long reads email newsletter features our strongest writing, most ambitious reporting, and award-winning storytelling about the outdoors. The light, which is powered by solar batteries, will still flash, and the Coast Guard will come by every once in a while to check on it. But when you own a lighthouse, the repairs are never really done. Fanad Lighthouse is a historic working lighthouse at the mouth of Lough Swilly, Ireland, that offers overnight stays. Thats when I look up, and realize were only halfway to the entrance. Captain F.A. Lighthouses arent the only kind of obsolete public buildings that we put on a pedestal I think people feel similarly about fire towers but lights hit the crosshairs of history, design, adventure, and allegory. His first renovation was his Malden home, a 10,000-square-foot Queen Anne style firehouse that had nearly burned to the ground when he and his wife, Lynn, bought it from the town for $32,500. In the case of the lens built for Minots Ledge, the number 143 was produced by eight flash panels that created three groups of flashes: the first showing one flash, the next four flashes, and the last three flashes. On October 13th, Bobby Sager, Polaroids chairman, won the auction and bought the lighthouse for $222,000. At night wed take beers out to the back porch and count the pulses from the light, picking out which ones said love and which ones said you.. After the events of 9/11 over a decade ago, without a primary need, government lighthouse maintenance funds were absorbed during the incorporation of the Coast Guard into homeland security, leaving enough only to maintain the automated lights and foghorns. From the top deck of Graves tower, Waller points two miles south to Little Brewster Island, home only to Boston Light, the first lighthouse in the United States, built in 1716. On January 26, 1839, the Grovers were forced to retreat to the Light House as a place of safety as the sea broke into the porch, unhung the doors and forced the door of the dwelling house and entered the lower rooms, causing considerable damage. The Grovers had faced a similar situation on October 31, 1829 as recorded in the keepers logbook. Owner/site manager: private. Two lighthouse keepers were killed when it went down and theyre said to haunt the new house. The 59-foot Cape Blanco Lighthouse, built in 1870 and the oldest lighthouse still standing in Oregon, offers tours into the workroom only and allows visitors onto the grounds. (8 minutes) Bobby Sager thinks in bulk. Plus: lighthouses where you can spend the night. (Photos courtesy of Dave Waller) 3.15 But he acknowledges his new role, and its uncertainty. The men sought refuge in the tower as the angry seas damaged the fuel tanks, helicopter pad and generator building, and destroyed the boathouse and boat launch. display: none; "If you apply too. 440 to 660 Hanna later returned to the service as keeper at Franklin Island. Eva recalls, Sometimes I played alone on the rocks, and when there were a lot of seals, Id make believe that was my army. The interior was damp. Naval Museum in Kittery, Maine where it may be viewed by the public. He amassed 13 units in a luxury Boston high-rise to create for himself a spacious, highly individualized home occupying three floors. Keepers were by-the-book, sober, carefully chosen men. South Africa. I had read that. Its peaceful. Three years later, Hanna left and was replaced by Eliphalet Grover. Hes arguably made it better. On April 16, 1851, the fierce winds of a noreaster left the tower reeling in the pounding seas and blinding snow. One promising exception is Graves Light Station, offshore from Boston, which has outlasted the Perfect Storm, among many poundings. The new lights characteristic was fixed white, and a fog bell mounted on the gallery encircling the lantern room, was tolled once every thirty seconds as needed. Saugerties Lighthouse on the Hudson River, in upstate New York, offers overnight accommodation. Wilson climbed up the iron ladder to light the lantern, but found it impossible to descend to the living quarters. Right in her hair.So after that, she started using the chamber pots. The money was well spent, though; although many waves have crashed over the ninety-seven-foot tower and even broken windows, the lighthouse has sustained no significant structural damage. To prevent further casualties, the aptly named Captain Michael Neptune Brennock was hired as a lifeguard, and only workers who could swim were employed. But almost no one navigates just by visual markers these days, which is why in 2009, the Coast Guard decided that they didnt need to hold on to Minots Ledge Light anymore. What kind of a guy buys a lighthouse? Its not just the Minots Ledge lighthouse thats changing hands. Shoals, Reefs, Harbor Lights, Islands in Rivers and Harbors. She started in Hatteras, North Carolina, near where she grew up and moved north, toward Hull, Mass., toward my dad. When we have high tides with big storms, we actually become two islands. The damage has limited public access in recent years, and at the bottom of the cliff below the lighthouse, rock-filled cages, used as protection from erosion until they were ripped out of the ground in 2018 by a storm, roll around like tumbleweedsmaking the future of Boston Light even more ominous. In March 1812, Thomas Hanna, grandfather of Marcus Hanna who would receive notoriety as keeper at Cape Elizabeth, agreed to man the light for $300 per year, plus a $100 advance for provisions. Find your friends on Facebook. Seeing the keepers predicament, the assistants in the lighthouse sprang into action and used a rope to lower Assistant Keeper Whitman to the water where he was able to seize Reamy. The other occupants of the island at the time were Head Keeper Williams and his wife, and S. H. Sawyer, who was filling in for Assistant Keeper Seaward, who was ashore taking care of his wife. We went all in, he says. It says a lot about Dave Waller that he and Bobby Sager have worked out an agreement, making Sager a partner in the Graves Light project. The fact that it no longer belongs to the public that its owned by an individual who can turn it into a vacation house or tear it down feels like a transgression. He even salvaged a stanchion railing from a World War II minesweeper for the mahogany deck. Mahan devised a system where the flash panels in a Fresnel lens were so arranged to indicate numbers. Australia. 2 3 south from Boston, to Route 228. Brazil. At the cost of your own life, you would keep that light lit, says Waller. Instead, Swift proposed a radical new design consisting of nine, sixty-foot-long iron pilings cemented five feet into the submerged rock, atop which would perch the lantern and keepers dwelling. The reasoning was that the legs would offer almost no resistance to the wind and water.