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My grandfather kept lights up and down and on and off the Maine coast. He began his career on tall masted ships in the Revesue Cutter Service. The Revenuers were absorbed by the U.S. Coast Guard, and the wooden sail ships gave way to cutters with internal combustion engines. As his family grew (he married an Irish Catholic), he left the Guard and joined the Lighthouse Service which would not be absorbed into the Coast Guard until World War II. But during the Hoover administration, he and his brood were stationed at the Blue Hill Bay Light.
In the 1920s, the Service offered a reasonable deal to a married man in uniform. Most lights came with a family dwelling. On the downside, these dwellings were not always connected to the mainland. The buildings of Blue Hill Light – tower, residence, bell house, and two sheds (one for powder and fuel, one for edibles) – filled most of the two and a half acres of Flye’s Island. The rest was gravel and granite. Technically, the island was connected to Flye’s Point by a submerged sand bar. One could walk to the mainland twice a day at low tides.
My mother and her siblings had to board with another family in town during the school year. They could still see their parents when time and tide convened . . . if they didn’t mind getting wet. Even at low tide the icy sea rippled chest deep on a child. It was over a one-hundred-yard trek. And when the ebb changed to flood the water flowed at a gallop.
It all sounds like a hard life today, but they thought they had it pretty good. Even during the Depression, he had steady work, free housing, government issued staples, and bounty from the sea. For that he had to maintain the buildings, haul oil up to the lamp and keep it burning in night and fog, wind the bell mechanism, and search and rescue when someone shot off a flare. His job title was Keeper though most people called him Captain.
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All this I write with researched certainty. The story I’m about to relate was overheard more than once when I was at an age when adults assume you’re not listening or can’t understand what you might hear.
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The Keeper slept with his eyes shut and his ears open. His acute hearing could guide him through a fog bound channel by listening to the waves lapping against the rocks. Now, he heard timber scrape hard against sand and then three low syllables – perhaps a curse in a foreign language. He left his bed and pulled wool garments over his flannel union suit. He padded past his children’s bunks. One was sleeping behind the wood stove. He would not disturb them unless he needed them.
In the front room, he laced up his brogans and stepped into hip high waders. He dropped a flare pistol into the right leg of his waders. He lit the lantern and tucked a dozen matches into the pocket of his wool shirt. He lifted the uniform hat – the Keeper’s hat – from the mantle and buffed its badge with his scarf. He fixed it securely on his head and went out the door.
The night was more wet than cold. The fog smelled of brine and something more. The towering light illuminated calm waters in pulsing sweeps. In one such pulse he glimpsed the craft hung high across the bar. As he approached it, he discerned the sweet, oaky perfume of whiskey.
His eyes had adjusted by the time he reached the water’s edge, and he could make out the whole boat – fifteen-foot peapod, bow high, stern low, and listing to starboard. Water slapped its sides. It wasn’t moving. It showed no lights now and had probably been running without illumination. He walked into the water and straight out to it.
A man was pulling futilely on the bow. The lantern revealed the man’s tense, frustrated face. He stood shoulder height to the Keeper and took a backward step away from the pod. The two men quickly established that they had no language in common. The Keeper shone his light over the gunnel. The keel was intact. The boards showed no breaks. The dark pungent puddles within were not seawater.
He brought the lantern back to the man’s apprehensive face. He had to be weighing the danger of swimming away in unknown currents against trying to run in thigh-deep water and neither was tipping the scale in favor of flight. The Keeper was also thinking. The next tide might lift this boat away, and it might smash it against the rocks, and the sun would be up by then. Everyone’s life would be simpler if the boat and the man were gone before sunrise.
He pointed to the bow and then over to a rock ledge. Then he pantomimed hauling line through a block and tackle. He would need one of the boys. Perhaps he’d wake a couple of them. He wanted hands who could speak English and tie secure knots. A bottle floated against his leg.
The keeper believed in duty above all; he mostly obeyed the law. But like many at that time or since, he didn’t understand how liquor could be illegal. His duty was to protect and rescue craft and sailors. Unlike his duty as a Revenuer, he was not obliged to inspect cargoes. However, the bottle might be a hazard to navigation; so, he plucked it from the sea and stowed it safely in his left wader.
The rum runner probably never understood how the block and tackle was supposed to function, but he certainly didn’t understand the Keeper’s idiosyncratic notions of law and duty. He proffered a fifty-dollar bill, and thrust it into the lamp light thinking that a deal should be acceptable to someone who had just appropriated a liter of Canadian whiskey in clear violation of the eighteenth amendment.
On the one hand, the Keeper was looking at twice his monthly salary. On the other, bribery was a court martial offense and the type of law which he both understood and believed in. Natural and legal bars can always be evaded or circumvented. But the moral bars we set for ourselves define who we are.
He tossed the bottle from one wader as he pulled the pistol from the other saying, “You’re under arrest for attempting to bribe a federal officer.”
A Coast Guard cutter came by the next day and added smuggling charges. The boat was seized. Most, but not all, of the cargo was still on board.
This story appeared in the
Nov/Dec 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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