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Michael “Mike” Carbino joined the Coast Guard on January 11, 1971, and in October of that year he had an opportunity to be assigned to Maine’s Nubble Lighthouse. Prior to getting the light keeping position, his Coast Guard interviewer told him that he would be assigned to the island for one year, and after that, if he and his wife were still speaking to each other, they would be allowed to stay for another year.
But contrary to what his superior officer thought, Mike and Linda Carbino did not find lighthouse life as bad as what they were led to believe. During an August 1972 interview with Coast Pilot reporter Jim Martin, both Mike and Linda said, “We’ve gotten to know each other a lot better.” Linda enjoyed her time knitting and sewing, and Mike had some extra time to work on his hobby of making picture frames with nautical braiding.
For Mike Carbino, lighthouse life was much different than what he had been used to in his previous military career. He had been in the U.S. Navy from August 3, 1964 to December 30, 1970 with a year and half of that time as the captain of a river supply boat in war-torn Vietnam. Although thousands of tourists could watch him and his family at the lighthouse from the mainland, some through binoculars, it was highly unlikely that they would start shooting at him.
During their stint at the lighthouse, the couple became somewhat of local celebrities in the community of York, and they were often sought out for photos and autographs during their shopping trips to the mainland.
However, it was frequently the tourists who presented the biggest problems. Some of them would often risk their lives and swim the dangerous 30-yard narrow strait between the mainland and the island. Others would walk or wade over at low tide. Most times, they would unexpectedly show up uninvited. As well as exciting the five dogs that the couple kept at the lighthouse, many people tried to take photos of the lighthouse from other than the normal angles; many of them would get dangerously close to the edge of the cliffs and the 30-foot sheer drop to the ocean and rocks below. Mike said that he would either tell these folks to stay at the lower end of the island or that the island was off limits to the public.
The cliffs were also of concern with their three-year-old daughter Mary who was not allowed out of the house by herself. Although they believed that the island lighthouse was a good place to raise a child, they also realized that she did not have any playmates, which is something that they would try to remedy during their off-island visits to the mainland.
The Carbinos were at Nubble Light during the big Nor’easter in February of 1972, when storm-tossed waves actually hit the windows of the house which stands 40 feet above mean high tide! One wave-tossed rock even smashed through a window in the tower’s lantern. Linda said that when the storm cleared, “the ice made the whole island look like it was covered with glass.” They also discovered that the waves had washed out the walkways and platforms around the boathouse after knocking it askew.
For obvious reasons during the winter months, trips off the island were less frequent, and supplies and groceries were often sent to the island by a cable-suspended basket which passed back and forth over the narrow channel.
But all in all, lighthouse life had been good for the Carbinos. At the time, Mike said that his stint as a lighthouse keeper was better than being on a ship a long way from home, “especially now that we’ve had all this time together.”
Whether or not Mike and Linda’s time at the lighthouse led up to it or not, they did get divorced, and in 1977, Mike remarried. Mike Carbino’s time in the Coast Guard ended on December 30, 1970. Born on October 14, 1943, Michael “Mike” Carbino passed away on May 24, 1998.
This story appeared in the
Jan/Feb 2020 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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