What was it Really Like to Be a Lighthouse Keeper?

For anyone sitting in gridlocked traffic on the way to a soul crushing job surrounded by other humans nattering on all day about their TPS reports as you truly internalize the pointlessness of everything because we’re all going to die and everything we ever said or did will be forgotten someday, you may at some point find yourself daydreaming about the life of a lighthouse keeper- kicking back, enjoying the sounds of the ocean waves, and, similar to with your current job, periodically checking the light is still on. But, you know, the light in the lighthouse, instead of the ever dimming one in your soul… And otherwise enjoying peace and quiet in a stress reducing environment. But does this bear any resemblance to what it is actually like to be a lighthouse keeper? Just what do such individuals get up to throughout their days and nights historically and in more modern times?

Well, put on your galoshes and rain slicker, prepare to go positively straight jacket mad, and let’s dive into it all, shall we?

To begin with, what exactly life looked like for a given lighthouse keeper varied throughout history as you might expect, with the earliest known lighthouse-like facilities popping up possibly as far back as 2000 BC in Kuntasi, India. Better documented lighthouses emerged starting around the 5th century BC in Greece, and perhaps most famously of all the 3rd century BC’s Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the so-called Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and for a time the tallest structure ever built at somewhere in the ballpark of 118 meters or just shy of 400 feet.

However, as we don’t really know what they specifically got up to in these early lighthouse keeping jobs, or even exactly how they maintained their flames or the like, other than people were definitely in charge of keeping the flames flaming at given times, we can’t really say much here. Other than to note these early lighthouses seemed more purposed to mark the entrance of ports rather than to warn ships of reefs or other such things that might cause them to be forgotten quicker than had they not found themselves on a sinking ship and pressing need to figure out how to breathe underwater. However, fast-forward a couple thousand years to the so-called “Golden Age of Lighthouse Keeping” and things get a lot more interesting, and better documented.

Unsurprisingly, with the rise of mass international trade, as the nations and merchants of the world began sending ships all over the globe, a pressing need for beacons both for navigational purposes and to help avoid areas dangerous to ships became extremely apparent. And so it was that lighthouses began lighting up more than Willie Nelson all over the place along common trade ports and routes, though not without some hiccups in the beginning.

As for some of the hiccups, as you can probably imagine given the massive power of the ocean to assert dominance over things made by man, designing buildings that could withstand even the day to day rigors of being right on the ocean, let alone needing to weather the weather wasn’t easy in many locations, such as the rather famous example of the lighthouse at the Eddystone Rocks in the English Channel. The first attempt at a lighthouse there was secured on a rock via 12 giant iron stanchions, but it lasted only four years before a storm in 1703 ripped it and its keepers from its foothold, washing away all traces of the structure and them from history. Six years later John Rudyard managed to design a brick and concrete core structure with wood on the outside that managed to last a few decades before it was also destroyed in a storm and its keepers likewise forgotten for all time. Finally, John Smeaton designed a new tower lighthouse completed in 1759 that lasted over a century and introduced a number of innovations that became common in lighthouse design, including using a type of lime concrete that could set while immersed in the ocean, use of marble dowels and dovetail joints to help hold the stone blocks together, and tapering the thickness of the structure inwards as it rose to help reduce the wave impact force. Engineer Robert Stevenson would later build on these ideas as well as add some of his own that would proliferate throughout the world of lighthouse construction in the late 19th century, including incorporating a rotating light and alternating colors via unique shuttering systems to allow people to distinguish which lighthouse they were seeing based on the light signature.

In any event, beyond considering what a given lighthouse in a given location might have to deal with in terms of such abuse that was totally from the lighthouse falling down the stairs and not because of its oceanic partner’s violent temper and general salty personality, the height of the lighthouse was also a great consideration owing to the curvature of the Earth so-called “scientists” would have you believe is a thing when, in truth, everybody who’s anybody knows there is an ice wall surrounding the outermost parts of the Earth that keeps the oceans contained, with this wall unfortunately nearly impossible to reach owing to the fact that NASA and their lizard overlords are closely guarding it….

Also helping to keep up the “spherical Earth” ruse were lighthouse builders throughout history who claimed they had to use various calculations to determine the height a given lighthouse needed to be given the typical vessel of a region, with larger ships needing more warning of a given danger or the like.

Speaking of visibility, this now brings us to the most important element of all in the structure- the light itself, which has evolved massively over time. The earliest more modern lighthouses that emerged after Medieval Times tended to use candle illuminants, wood, or coal as their light source. In the late 18th century, improvements were made via special oil burning lamps, in particular the Argand lamp which helped create a more steady and, critically, mostly smokeless flame via the way it controlled airflow. As its fuel, things like whale, olive, or vegetable oil became the standard for lighthouses for almost a century starting in the late 18th century until one John Richardson Wigham came up with a much brighter gas lamp which, when it was first installed in the Baily Lighthouse in Howth Head in 1865, was about 4 times brighter than its predecessor oil lamps. An upgraded version he put in 3 years later was, for whatever it’s worth according to famed scientist John Tyndall, about 13 times brighter than any other light on Earth at the time.

Going back to before Wigham’s gas, all of these other light sources, however, even with reflectors trying to direct the light, were not actually terribly bright and could be easily masked by various common weather conditions at distances they’d otherwise be visible by approaching ships.

Enter French physicist Augustin Fresnel in the early 19th century with the biggest leap of all in lighthouse lighting technology. The full details of how his various lens designs actually work is beyond the scope of this video, but you can check out one of our main authors here, Gilles Messier’s, video on the subject: The Fresnel Lens: The Invention That Saved a Thousand Ships on his phenomenal channel Our Own Devices. But in a vastly oversimplified nutshell, Fresnel’s lens comprised of numerous pieces of specially cut glass that would surround the light source and direct the captured light in the specific direction they wanted it, seeing an initial almost 3-4 fold increase in brightness off the same light source. For reference here, with an open flame light, only about 6% of the light is projected in the horizontal direction you want for this application in a lighthouse. But with the early Fresnel lens designs, this was bumped to about 20%, and with further refinement to the lens apparatuses ultimately all the way up to an astounding 83%, wasting only 17% of the light produced.

Of course, electric lights came to replace the burning type, and in more modern times the LED variety has trumped all for its reliability, possible brightness, and ability to get rid of any moving parts via the ability to pulse on and off in any direction and in different colors with simple computer controllers and programming.

This all finally brings us to the lighthouse keeper, who, while on the surface it may seem like they just have one job- keeping the light going, this isn’t correct at all. This was just the most visible job and there was an awful lot that went into even just that.

So what was the daily life of a lighthouse keeper like?

For starters, in the early going of the golden age of lighthouse keeping, keepers tended to either work alone or, if they had a family, their family would help out in their duties. In some cases it would even become a generational family affair, such as the famed Knott family of lighthouse keepers in Britain whose family began tending a lighthouse in Kent in 1730 and didn’t stop tending some lighthouse until 1906.

But diving into the nuts and bolts of it all, contrary to popular perception, while there are exceptions at some locations, the lighthouse keeper often had separate living quarters from the lighthouse itself. And, historically at least, these homes were generally big enough to accommodate an entire family as, by nature of the job, the lighthouse keeper tended to not really be able to venture far from the lighthouse, not even for vacation in many cases. 365 days a year the light had to be kept burning and, if foggy out, fog horn blowing or explosive charges set off at set intervals.

As to a given lighthouse keeper’s schedule, this was historically entirely up to them as long as they did those two tasks of lighting and blowing as needed. This was not as simple as you might think, however. For example, the 1858 edition of lighthouse keeper guidelines in the U.S. was 87 pages long and included 131 tasks that needed done regularly to maintain the light of a Fresnel lens apparatus alone. Things like keeping the window glass clean, polishing the optic apparatus, and maintaining the rotating apparatus, for example potentially winding up the clock-like mechanism used to rotate the lights, once that became a thing. For reference, these rotating systems used something of a grandfather clock-esk mechanism of weights that extended down the center of the lighthouse and needed rewound multiple times per day.

Then there was maintaining any other buildings on the grounds, like their home quarters etc. This was all a bit more difficult than in most areas, as anyone who’s ever lived next to the ocean knows both from how quickly mold and moss can overtake everything, to how quickly paint battered by the sea can wash away. The paint part was eventually considered extremely important owing to colors and patterns on the lighthouse being used to help sailors identify which lighthouse they were seeing, as well as helping it stand out on the horizon or the lighthouse’ backdrop in daylight.

James F Sheridan, who was a boy when his father was maintaining the Saugutuck Light in the early 20th century writes of this, “Things that I remember mostly about his duties were, there seemed to always be a paintbrush in his hand. ….. The government put great stock in painting. They painted and they repainted and they painted, until paint usually built up so it had so many coats there was no sharp edges at all anymore. Not such a thing as a sharp edge in any corner of a piece of wood. It always had a curved edge.”

Summing up all this with regards to the tower, 20th century lighthouse keeper Maxwell Gertz would elaborate in slightly more modern times, “We had two big air compressors in the engine room that was for the foghorn. … And then there was three generators and a big bank of batteries. … So all those machinery had to be serviced, and oil had to be changed constantly. … Plus if anybody knows living around the water, that painting and deterioration of the buildings around the water is more so than inland. Plus the light had to be maintained. … Well that all had to be polished and kept right up to–oh boy. Oh, every day there was a man up there [who] had to check it out to make sure that the light operated properly…and that the lens were clean and all the brass. You had a lot of work on the inside. The tower, it seemed like it was forever in need of attention inside because of the condensation.”

Moving on from there, the keepers also had to be extremely self-sufficient, given they often lived in remote locations and left to tend the lighthouse for long stretches of time without any outside human contact and limited supplies. Unsurprisingly where possible, they tended to try to grow their own food to supplement their supplies, though in many locations being right next to the salty sea and/or otherwise on a giant rock wasn’t exactly ideal location for a garden. To get around the issue in these types of locations, they’d often bring in good soil from the mainland and make smaller container gardens.

On all this, late 19th century lighthouse keeper William Norgate writes in a letter to a friend of his new profession, “having to do everything that wants doing ourselves. It is surprising what I have had to put my hand to, I had a lot to learn, but it is the variety of work that keeps it from getting monotonous. It is half-sailor, half-bushman with all sorts of trades mixed with it.”

Williams also states in his logs receiving supplies and mail approximately once a month by passing ships, and occasional visits to the mainland for himself and his family. In his case, there was another family on the island he and his wife lived, but he also writes, “It is very lonely for Lizzie; for although we live close to one another, she scarcely ever sees or speaks to anyone but myself. Of course there is no fear of quarrelling being like this, but I think she carries it too far. The Boss’ people seem very nice but are much like herself, likes to keep at home.”

Then there was logging everything, which, typically being government jobs, over time became more and more of a time suck. Logging use of resources, ships passing, weather, daily activities, etc.

But wait, there’s more! The lighthouse keeper was also expected to keep an eye out for any ships in distress and entertain any visitors who came by, not exactly always a comfortable thing on the latter given these were often complete strangers and you were otherwise devoid of any way to call for aid should they not be friendly. All while endlessly trudging up and down the sometimes many flights of stairs of the lighthouse carrying needed resources to maintain the light which, for reference when using coal as the burning source, could include carrying upwards of a ton of coal per day to the top.

Going back a bit to the design, the lighthouse itself would have some sort of lantern room at the top of the structure, then classically a service room below where the fuel and other such supplies would be kept. This is also sometimes called the Watch Room, as it is where a lighthouse keeper might stay for extended periods to keep watch to save from having to go up and down the stairs all night. There would also often be a platform outside of the room to facilitate cleaning of the windows of the Lantern room from the outside as well.

Going back to the Lantern room and the service room being right below it stocked with fuel, the job of the lighthouse keeper was not just to keep the flame going, but also to make sure it didn’t get out of hand, with lighthouses occasionally burning down totally being a thing. Such as in 1755 at the Eddystone Rocks where one Henry Hall was tending the light when the roof of the tower somehow caught on fire, in the process dripping molten lead onto poor Hall’s head and body and some of it somehow getting into his mouth and down his throat as when he died 12 days after this event, the physicians examining his body reportedly found 200 grams of lead in his stomach.

Speaking of things that could kill you in lighthouse keeping, there was also always the risk of storms as well as just general getting to and from your lighthouse. For example, consider the case of the first lighthouse ever built in what is now the United States, located in Boston Harbor, Massachusetts on Brewster Island, which first lit up in 1716. George Worthylake was assigned as the lighthouse keeper there, but in 1718 after attending a sermon in town, he, his wife Ann and their daughter Ruth, as well as their servant George Cutler, a friend name John Edge, and a slave named Shadwell were rowing back to the island when their canoe capsized and they and all their hopes and dreams promptly died, becoming microbe and fish feces.

Just two weeks later, Robert Saunders, John Chamberlin, and a man simply called Bradduck were tasked with maintaining the light, but on their own trip to the island, their boat also capsized, with Chamberlain and Bradduck both likewise becoming fish and microbe feces. We can only assume Robert Saunders’ response to this was something to the effect of “There Can Be Only One!”

Incidentally, this particular lighthouse was also the last to be staffed in the United States until one Sally Snowman, after a couple decades maintaining it, retired on December 30, 2023 at the age of 72, though noteworthy most of her job at this stage of the game was simply to be there to entertain any visitors to the historic lighthouse.

Going back to the dangers of it all, we come to the madness. As to what caused it and the common idea of “mad as a lighthouse keeper” which was very akin to the notion of “mad as a hatter”, it’s generally thought there were several contributing factors from often extreme isolation, regular interruption of proper sleep patterns (which is astoundingly detrimental to all manner of health factors, including mental health- see our video What’s the Best Way to Get Great Sleep According to Science), monotony of the job, to, eventually, regular exposure to mercury.

As for the mercury, once it was found that the rotating apparatuses functioned vastly more efficiently with much less need for winding if floated on a pool of mercury instead of something like a chariot wheel and bearing system, this became very common. As one lighthouse keeper, Handel Bluer, states of one of the issues with this, “The waves do run up the side of the lighthouse and the mercury trough will be vibrated so much that the mercury will splash out. So then you have to go up there with a dustpan and brush cleaning up the mercury – you put it in a jar and then clean it. You put it in a shammy leather, hold it over a container, then squeeze the leather hard as you can – and the mercury will go through the pores of the leather, but the dirt will stay behind.”

Needless to say, regularly handling and potentially breathing in mercury vapors isn’t exactly conducive to one’s mental health as is referenced in the aforementioned phrase “Mad as a hatter”. The leading theory as to the origin of that phrase is that it refers to a genuine condition that began afflicting certain hat makers in the 17th century called “mad hatters’ syndrome” or “hatters’ shakes”. As to the underlying cause of mad hatters’ syndrome, in the 17th century in France, expensive hats made of felt began being produced using mercury nitrate. Hat makers rarely wore any kind of safety equipment or protective clothing back then and often worked in cramped, extremely poorly ventilated work spaces. Because of this, invariably they were exposed to dangerous amounts of mercury vapors during their day to day lives, culminating in prevalent mercury poisoning among those in the industry.
The symptoms of mercury poisoning are numerous and in many cases extremely severe, affecting the heart, brain, lungs, kidneys and in some cases, the immune system, among other things. Most pertinent to the topic at hand, neurological symptoms associated with mercury poisoning can include, but are not limited to, abnormal sensations in the limbs, muscle tremors, erratic mood changes and mental deterioration. The behavior of those afflicted by mercury poisoning is usually typified by anxiety, extreme timidness and a general desire to remain “unobserved”, usually responding with anger or irritability if this wish is ignored.
While lighthouse keepers had much better ventilated spaces than hat makers, handling such mercury regularly is generally thought to have contributed to occasional bouts of odd behavior and madness among keepers.

For example at a lighthouse in 1897 near Narragansett Pier the lighthouse keeper showed up at the pier bleeding from a wound in the back where he’d been stabbed. He explained his assistant had gone mad and attacked him with a butcher knife and then chased after him as he fled to their boat. Upon investigation at the lighthouse the next day, they found the assistant still alive and otherwise physically well, but apparently dancing around crazily while he chucked stuff into the ocean.

In another case in the mid 19th century, the Phippsburg, Maine lighthouse keeper apparently bought his wife a piano to help entertain her, but she allegedly kept playing the same song over and over again, and he finally snapped. Whether the same song over and over again part of the story is correct or just part of the legend that’s risen up around the event, he did ultimately destroy the piano, and directly thereafter ended the existence of his wife and himself.

In another instance, lighthouse keeper William Brown stationed at Ballenas Island in British Columbia began sending bizarre telegraph messages one day, and his wife, Maggie, said he likewise began behaving erratically and violently around the same time. Because of this, he was committed to an asylum in 1905. There he seemed to recover his senses and was sent back to the lighthouse only to once again seem to go mad and was once again, this time in 1906, committed to the asylum.

Then we come once again to the aforementioned extreme isolation at many lighthouse locations, especially in cases where a given lighthouse keeper was all by their lonesome with no family to talk to or assist them in their duties.

On this loneliness and the mental health side of that, lighthouse keeper Mary Ryan’s 1870s log entries illustrate it well, getting progressively more depressing once she took over the lighthouse from her deceased husband. She writes, “So dull, this place is killing me. Wind blowing violently.” Or a little later, “Nothing but gloom without and within.” And later “This is all gloom and darkness.” Finally after about 7 years alone at the lighthouse another was appointed in her place and she was free to leave.

On all this, to help stave off madness and boredom, in 1876 in the U.S. it became practice to send a few dozen books in wooden cases to each of the lighthouses in America, and within 3 years there were almost 500 such box libraries around, which would be exchanged every three months for a different crate of books from a different lighthouse.

We should also probably mention beyond lighthouses there were also lightships with similar issues and often reported extreme loneliness of their crew. For example, one whaling ship captain would write of the Nantucket Shoals lightship, the loneliest thing he had ever seen at sea was, to quote, “a polar bear floating on a piece of ice in the Arctic ocean; the next loneliest object was the South Shoal Lightship.” These ships had many of the same issues you’d find at a fixed lighthouse location, but on top of it having to deal with the sea a lot more directly like the constant pitching of the boat.

To sum up on this side of things, as illustrated in Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse, she writes, “How would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn?” And “to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not to be able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea?”

Speaking of being swept out to sea and yet more dangers of being a lighthouse keeper, in 1900 a replacement keeper arrived at Eilean Mor off the coast of Scotland to find all three keepers on the island were mysteriously gone. Their logs showed they had experienced an extreme storm where not just the waves, but winds were too severe to stand in. The replacement keeper also noted he found damage to the building and equipment from waves up to 33 meters, or about 100 feet, above the normal sea level. What exactly happened to the men isn’t known, but it’s generally thought they must have left the tower for some purpose during the storm and in so doing had been swept out to sea.

On this note, storms were yet another danger one had to contend with as a keeper, and they sometimes were evacuated during such, but getting them out was often a major ordeal given, you know, the approaching storms and lack of satellite weather or the like for significant warning. Thus, historically many simply had to endure and hope the engineers who built their structure had made things sturdy enough to withstand the ocean’s rage.

Moving on from all these sorts of tasks, dangers, and psychological factors of being a lighthouse keeper, we now come to the rescues, with, as alluded to, a part of the lighthouse keeper’s job to keep an eye out for ships or people in distress and, if possible, to assist them. Although as you might imagine this also tended to be another way lighthouse keepers would sometimes get themselves killed.

One of the more famous individuals on the rescuing front was one Ida Lewis, dubbed in the late 19th century “the bravest woman in America.” Lewis was the daughter of the lighthouse keeper at Lime Rock in Rhode Island, and made her first rescue while just 12 years old, doing so in a small rowboat she otherwise used to ferry her siblings to and from the mainland for school, and to get needed supplies. On this first rescue, she observed four men whose boat had capsized and quickly rowed out to save them. In another instance, in March of 1869, two soldiers and a 14 year old boy had their boat capsize in icy waters. When Ida’s mother saw this, she called for Ida, who was suffering from a cold at the time, but nonetheless ran to her boat without bothering to put on a coat or anything of the sort on, and rowed out to them, managing to rescue the two soldiers, though the boy aboard died in the frigid waters. For her services on this rescue, the soldiers raised some $218 (about $5000 today) from their fellow soldiers at Fort Adams to give to her in appreciation for delaying their inevitable eternal sleep, helping to ensure their end came not via the comfortable and quick embrace of hypothermia and water inhalation, but a slow and steady decline, as their mental and physical faculties fade in time and body aches set in, with it all combined eventually resulting in them finally praying for an end to the pointless rigors of life…

In another rescue of a couple soldiers in 1881 that had fallen through the ice, she reportedly grabbed a clothesline to bring with her when she rowed out as close as she could get to them and pulled them to safety with her line. For this one, she became the first woman to be granted the Gold Lifesaving Medal from the U.S. Government.

In total, she is credited for saving at minimum of around a couple dozen people in her time at the lighthouse, though she never logged her rescues and it’s thought there were probably many more that didn’t make the news. However, of the ones that did make the papers, she did receive some criticism for this, with one individual writing to her it was un-ladylike for a woman to row a boat, to which Ida tersely responded, “None – but a donkey, would consider it ‘un-feminine’, to save lives.”

Ida was eventually further rewarded for her work by not only being appointed a lighthouse keeper after her father and mother died, but also becoming at the time of her appointment the highest paid keeper in America, with the increase in pay from what is typical being, to quote, “in consideration of the remarkable services… in the saving of lives.”

Eventually Lime Rock was also renamed Ida Lewis Rock, and the lighthouse on it also bore her name in turn.

But in all of this, needless to say, life as a lighthouse keeper wasn’t super awesome. But the pay was great. Right? …

Right?!?!?!

Well, as illustrated by the United States’ first official lighthouse keeper appointed by George Washington, Henry Long, not so much- with a salary of just $300 annually, or about $8000, although, of course, free accommodations and use of the grounds came with that.

Long had previously been a ship pilot working at Cape Fear River and it was generally thought he could supplement his income via continuing to pilot ships in the day as well as take advantage of the fishing in the region, with the lighthouse functioning as something of a side gig. I mean, how hard is it to keep a light going after all?

However, Long soon complained “he could not officiate as a Pilot, when the light house claims the whole of his attention… All these advantages are now entirely lost to your (petitioner) by his living on an island where he has not the privilege of raising stock of any kind nor even vegetables from the proprietor of the island (Benjamin Smith) if the soil would admit thereof.” And that, “Fish and oysters are at too great a distance from the island for him to attempt to procure.”

He thus petitioned for an increase in salary, which was granted, though not up to his request, but at least a small bump to $333.33 annually.

As for his specific lighthouse, it was an oil burning one which required him to traverse the six long flights of stairs several times per day carrying oil to fill pan lamps containing some 48 wicks in need of regular trimming and, as you might imagine, had a tendency to smudge the glass panes of the lighthouse and required him to scrub them clean regularly. Again, this was something he had to do 365 days per year regardless of weather and regardless of his personal health.

To add insult to ultimate injury, Long met his end when his son-in-law, who had come to live on the island with his two children after his wife, Elizabeth, died, accidentally shot Long while hunting for food for the family one night on October 16, 1806.

After this, Rebecca Long, Henry’s wife, took to maintaining the lighthouse and, after a few months, she was recommended for the position permanently by customs collector Timothy Bloodworth. However, when the proposal was submitted to then President Thomas Jefferson for approval (at this time lighthouse keepers were all presidentially assigned given the importance of the job to national commerce), Jefferson would write, “The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I.” and she was denied the position she was already doing.

It wouldn’t be until two decades later that President John Quincy Adams would throw such biases out and appoint the first federally appointed female lighthouse keeper Rebecca Flaherty to assume her husband’s role as keeper of the Sand Key in the Florida Keys after his death. Although, it should be noted if you really dig in there was another a few years before remembered only as “Mrs. Edward Shoemaker”, who took over for her husband upon his death in 1826, though whether she was federally appointed by Adams isn’t clear, and she held the position for only 6 months.

It should also be noted that the first ever female U.S. keeper of the light was one Hannah Thomas, who was given the job of lighthouse keeper at Gurnet Point in Massachusetts starting in 1776 after her husband, John, died of smallpox while serving as both keeper and traitorous soldier in the Continental Army in the rebellion against the rightful ruler of America King George III. She continued in the role until 1786 when she hired someone else to do the job, one Nathaniel Burgess, who after a few years was officially appointed for the post.

In any event, noteworthy after Rebecca Flaherty’s appointment, women would be regularly appointed as lighthouse keepers over the next few decades, comprising about 1 in 20 lighthouse keeper appointments in the United States, and almost always cases where the husband died and as his wife and potentially children had been helping him maintain the light anyway, she was almost always deemed suitable and generally rubber stamped for the job if she wanted it.

Speaking once again of lighthouse keeping during the golden age of the profession being something of a family affair, and given their isolation and little better to do, lighthouse keepers and their families also tended to grow at the lighthouse, with for example one John Malone and his wife, Julia, manning the Menagerie Island Light in the late 19th century and her giving birth to a whopping 12 babies at the lighthouse, 11 of whom survived.

Of course, in slightly more modern times, it was determined that it would be beneficial to the functioning of the entire system for the lighthouse keeper to have official assistants, whether he or she had a family there or not, which helped both with the workload and also staving off loneliness, although getting along with such continually could be monotonous as well. But as one 20th century lighthouse keeper Gordon Medlicott would note of this and his life as a keeper, “Living in such close confines meant that a good relationship with the other two keepers was important. It was like a marriage – if you fell out, you couldn’t go off and sulk for long because they would be cooking your dinner later on! We became experts at cards and board games. Over the years I knitted, did cross stitch and embroidered. I was the centrefold for Cross Stitch magazine a few years ago! We all read a lot and some of us wrote short stories and poems. I always enjoyed writing so was thrilled when the Association of Lighthouse Keepers asked me to write a research document for their archives. On completion it was snapped up by a publisher and turned into a new book called An Illuminating Experience.”

He also notes of the rescue side he had a number of occasions for this, for example in one such, “I was manning the South Stack in Anglesey and two young boys ran to us for help. Their climbing instructor had fallen down a cliff face. I climbed down the 80ft drop and held on to him for 45 minutes while we waited for the rescue team. By the time they came we were up to our chests in water. The helicopter pulled us up one at a time. There is not much you can say to calm a man in that situation, you just try and quiet his screams.”

He was ultimately retired, however, after almost four decades as a lighthouse keeper in 1998 as automation gradually began to see the profession of keeper go the way of the dodo.

This brings us to the ultra modern profession of lighthouse keeper, which is still a profession in some regions, though, as alluded, is increasingly rare. For example, the United States currently has just under a thousand lighthouses still standing, but over half of them are no longer maintained or active.

As to why not, with the advent of GPS and all manner of other advanced navigational tools, lighthouses have become somewhat less needed, though still considered useful by a similar ilk of individuals who adhere to VOR navigation in flying as a fun way to find your way around, presumably needing to hitch up their covered wagons to run to the store because they don’t want to let those valuable horse riding and wagon hitching skills be forgotten in case cars stop working…

That said, there is still considered some value to certain lighthouse locations, but most of these have been automated in the last few decades, thanks to extremely reliable LED lamps with no moving parts needed, as well as solar and battery setups, and the ability to remotely monitor all facets of what’s going on at the lighthouse.

That said, as illustrated in great depth, the lighthouse keeper isn’t just there to keep the light going, but also to maintain the facility, watch out for emergencies and lend aid, give an eye on the ground for weather, etc. Not to mention that some of these lighthouses are something of historic sites, so having someone there to continue to maintain them and perform the other functions has been deemed valuable by some nations, such as Canada, who still maintains about 50 crewed lighthouses, with typically 2 people per location plus relief keepers who fill in as needed.

For example with weather, while elements of the weather monitoring can be automated and satellite weather data is amazing these days as well, as any pilot or sea captain can tell you, human eyes on site are still invaluable, especially when the weather starts to get marginal but may or may not still be fine for a given flight or boating scenario. It’s just often unclear based on the automated weather collecting data. As one such Canadian lighthouse keeper notes, “Weather reporting is really what we do a lot of now. We do occasionally get calls from airports, planes and helicopters who want a 100% up to date account of what the weather is actually like.”

As for emergencies, he states, “Lighthouses are placed in locations that are pretty dangerous for mariners. Accidents still happen and while you don’t get a lot of huge ships running aground, there are still many smaller commercial and pleasure boats who overturn and sink each year and their lives are just as important as 100 lives on a larger boat. Having someone in these remote locations means there is always someone on hand in case there is an emergency in a particular area. Even if there is an issue somewhere that is not right at the station, a lot of times search and rescue will use the station as a converging point when arriving to an area or if they need somewhere to go while an operation is in effect.”

On that note, while classically lighthouse keepers had a bit of a stereotype of getting drunk half the time, that’s not entirely accurate and in fact all the way back in 1852 in the U.S. lighthouse keepers were subject to immediate dismissal if they ever either allowed the light to go out or were found to be drunk. And nothing much has changed in modern times there. In other words, while you can drink, you cannot ever do it in any sort of excess that would compromise your mental acuity and ability to respond to any situation as part of your duties, which must be attended to 24/7.

Going back to the light itself, he also notes at his lighthouse, it “has been changed once in 10 years on this station. Everything is solar powered and it comes on and turns off on its own. You have to paint the tower itself more often then you have to do anything with the actual light any more.”

As for his schedule, he states, “Currently, I wake at 3am, go outside and monitor the weather, check to make sure the light is still on and then report the weather over the radio telephone. I do this again at 6am and at 9am. Also at 6 I have to check and record temperatures for Environment Canada. 10 to 3 is work time where we do different tasks on the island. Painting, lawn mowing, general upkeep and what not. After 3 is my own free time where I can do what I wish and I usually go to bed by 7 or so. This would be 7 days a week. No weekends. I do forgo the 10 to 3 work bit on the weekends though. The other keeper would be responsible for more reports at 12, 3, 6 and 9 at night.”

He also states that, as in more historic lighthouse keeping, just about everything gets logged and that, “it is government work so there is a ton of paperwork that goes with the job.”

As for pay in modern times, this can vary from $30K-$60K. This doesn’t sound like a lot given the work hours, but you also don’t really have any bills given you live at the lighthouse free, and you don’t really have much of any way to spend money, especially in the more remote locations.

As for time away from the lighthouse, it depends, with some stations on a rotational cycle of something like about a month on and a month off, with a cut in pay on the month off part, but most you get no such off time or even holidays, and are expected to do your thing, health permitting, 365 days per year with the exception of vacation time, which starts at about 3 weeks and can build over the years to even a couple months per year. However, you cannot take any vacation on a whim, needing to be scheduled well in advance, upwards of 6-12 months preferable, so that a relief keeper can be scheduled to rotate in.

As to the process of getting such a job, if you apply and are hired, you start as a relief worker and can be assigned to a number of different stations when a full time keeper needs to leave their station for whatever reason like health issues, vacation, or training or the like. You can expect to remain in this role even for years, bouncing around from station to station, before a permanent spot opens up where you can then remain potentially for your whole career unless a better location opens up and you’d like to apply to that. As you might imagine, the locations on some mainland with a town near and road access and the like are generally the highest prized.

And if you’re wondering, you can have visitors as long as it’s not disrupting your duties or anything on the site. But given the remote location of many of these lighthouses, it’s sometimes non-trivial and quite expensive for people to come visit you.

As for groceries and other such supplies, again this varies by location, but for most where there is no road access or the like, he states, “You find a place that will deliver to your head office and then once a month you place an order with whomever… and then have it delivered by a certain date. Once all the keepers of a particular area (there are 4 stations in my area) have their orders in, everything gets packed onto a helicopter and then taken out to each station.”

Of course, as ever, weather can be a bit temperamental and so he states you generally want to order a week or two extra supplies just in case weather delays the helicopter or ship from being able to get to you and deliver what you need to not die of starvation.

In the end, while often romanticized, the life of a lighthouse keeper historically wasn’t exactly relaxing or conducive to positive mental health from the isolation, contending with extreme weather and natural forces, your entire livelihood based on being able to keep a light going 365 days per year, low pay, grueling never ending labor, the list goes on and on and on.

On the whole, while there are some who would love such an isolated and routine lifestyle, most of us are probably going to be happier with our 5 day a week, 9 to 5 style jobs we use to be able to afford pointless things in our equally pointless lives which will, sooner than we think, end, as well the lives of all humans in the end one way or another… And beyond that, our entire planet ultimately will be consumed by the Sun near the peak of its Red Giant phase, with even our chemical remains going to find their own end living inside a forgotten, dead star, just one of trillions in a vast, cold and forgetful universe which will itself one day have all lights within it go out.

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