![]() As the Coast Guard writes, “She not only kept the light burning but by her own account may have saved as many as 50 people.” Still, Cuadrado explains, women who became head lightkeepers “always got paid half.” Whereas men in the 19th century typically earned $600 a year to live in a solitary cylinder, she says, women earned just $300. But after several men turned down the position because the location was too isolated, Walker was hired. (Walker's husband was originally the lightkeeper, but came down with pneumonia before his death, his last reported words to her were “Mind the lights, Katie.”) After she temporarily took over as head lightkeeper, Walker ran against bias: The government thought she was too small to do the job, and looked for what they thought would be a hardier man. “It tended to be, especially in the early to mid-19th century, like, ‘You’re a Whig? I’m a Whig!’”Īt the museum, information boards tell the stories of hardworking icons like Kate Walker, a famous female lightkeeper stationed in a nearby New York harbor. And often, for the first hundred years, it was civilians with political connections, as Celestina Cuadrado, the museum’s curator, explains. Prior to the Fresnel lens, lighthouses had only one type of light-strong and steady.īack in the early days of the country, civilians ran these all-important beacons. That was a big upgrade for those navigating the ocean’s waves, who could become dangerously disoriented when every dim lighthouse looked the same. Visitors to the museum can peer at several of these lenses, which also allowed lighthouses to create individualized luminous patterns so that sailors could recognize which part of a coast they were approaching. The newly engineered system increased, by many miles, the distance at which a sailor could spot a tower’s glow. In 1822, Fresnel created a new type of lens that revolutionized optics by more effectively reflecting and refracting light. The new museum shows off a number of tools that helped guide ships over the years, including rusty foghorns and Fresnel lenses (pronounced freh-nel and named for French physicist Augustin Fresnel). ![]() ![]() As the museum’s executive director told the New York Times, “Lighthouses built the economy of this world.” The Founding Fathers knew that if you couldn’t sail safely into America’s harbors, “you couldn’t bring merchandise or do business.” On August 7, 1789, back when George Washington was President, Congress passed an act for the establishment and support of lighthouses, beacons, buoys and public piers (the annual National Lighthouse Day commemorates that anniversary). Lighthouse Service’s 3rd District,” which extended from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, north to Albany, New York, and east to the Massachusetts border.Īt the time-and for much of our country’s history-lighthouses were vital for keeping sailors alive, as well as for commerce. The depot was, according to the new museum, “the key manufacturing, storage, supply and maintenance center for the U.S. In 1862, several years after the hospital burned, the Staten Island Lighthouse Depot was erected in its place. And the museum’s site itself is filled with history: It’s the former location of the New York Marine Hospital (popularly called The Quarantine), a place where up to 1,500 immigrants could be held if suspected of being in “poor or questionable health”-and which, in 1858, “ a riotous mob of locals” burned down. This weekend, in honor of National Lighthouse Day on August 7, it’s offering free admission and a number of events in celebration of its grand opening, including talks from a noted MIT professor who doubles as a lightkeeper on a remote island in Lake Superior. While the museum had a soft opening of sorts a few months back, it’s now officially welcoming visitors. ![]() New York’s Staten Island is now home to the National Lighthouse Museum, a non-profit site in the works since 1998 that displays the artifacts and cultural history of a sometimes-overlooked job-one in which people lived a lonely life on a tiny parcel of land to maintain a light that saved sailors’ lives. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |