However, some found solace in poetry one keeper named Chamberlain composed a haiku-like verse in the official keeper’s log: Fog fog and nothing but fog had no mail since 9th instant getting short of provisions. Occasionally an assistant would disappear for days, or never return. The blast alone, which lasts five seconds and recurs every seventy seconds, is enough to drive an ordinary man mad.” After 176 hours of continuous horn blasts during a foggy spell (the signal was not needed when the weather was clear), “the jaded attendants looked as if they had been on a protracted spree.”Ĭases of insanity and violence were not unknown. ![]() A visitor in 1887 wrote that the foghorn “made night and day alike hideous…. Beyond the hundreds of steep steps to the lighthouse were several hundred more to reach the signal building where the steam apparatus was quirky and dangerous. Work down at the fog signal was particularly hard. A news item noted that “a familiar sight to the ranchman was this genial gentleman lying dead drunk by the roadside, while his horse, attached to the lighthouse wagon, grazed at will over the country.” The next year a pair of assistants threatened Wadsworth with violence, refusing work they didn’t like.Īlcohol was prevalent, with one keeper rumored to drink the lamp alcohol when the booze ran out. Point Reyes Lighthouse in 1990 © Dewey Livingston Parker, according to historian Anna Toogood, “burst into drunken song to entertain the guests, and to Keeper Wadsworth’s disgust, vomited in front of the company.” Perhaps the last straw was when the crew of the light station attended a Christmas Eve ball at a nearby ranch. He disobeyed his head keeper, William Wadsworth, misused and tampered with the fog signal, failed to start it on foggy days, and often didn’t even show up for duty. Parker whose stay, in 1875, was marked with insubordination and neglect. ![]() One particularly bad seed was third assistant J. The terrible weather-hard winds and long periods of fog-the incessant fog whistles and sirens, the hundreds of steps to and from the houses, and absolute isolation grated on many of the men, leading to difficulties in the household. Until the Service built two cottages for assistant keepers in 1885, for fifteen years the head keeper lived with his three assistants. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that men “have occasionally to prostrate themselves during the passage, making the best of their way between gusts, so furious is the sweep of the wind.” Not surprisingly, there was frequent turnover. Sometimes the weather made it impossible to climb the stairs back to the residence, so a sleeping room was built below. Keepers worked double watches, one at the light tower and another at the fog signal they endured battering winds, rain (and heavy fogs could be as wet as rainfall), and the constant blasts of the fog signal. The lighthouse keepers’ routine involved tending, maintaining and repairing the light and fog signal, cleaning and painting, keeping daily logs, hauling supplies from the dock at Drakes Bay, traveling to the post office (initially at Olema, later on the much nearer F Ranch) and visiting neighboring ranches. ![]() This film certainly gave eternal rest to “the good and the bad and the worst and the best” parts of Poe and his brilliant madness, but it also somewhat spoke to the quality of certain elements of the movie as well which is why CrypticRock gives Edgar Allan Poe’s Lighthouse Keeper 3 out of 5 stars.Visitors to the Point Reyes Lighthouse © Jack Mason Museum To have his story illustrated through the eyes of Cooper gave life to what was once believed to be just a rumor and viewers were able to make that descent into darkness and insanity which took hold of, and ultimately overpowered, the respected Edgar Allan Poe. So, did Poe know what was happening to him? Did he understand that he was sick? One can be sure the fact that he was an alcoholic surely had some bearing on his diminished health as well. Interestingly enough, this story was thought to be symbolic of Poe’s own mental and physical decline and with this story being the last piece he worked on before passing away on October 7, 1849, it can easily be inferred that he had already been afflicted with the disease at the time he was writing this, especially considering rabies can have an incubation time of up to two years. Poe worked on The Light-House from May to August in 1849, the year of his death, which has since been confirmed to be due to an animal bite/scratch that resulted in the famed Master of the Macabre contracting rabies which then went untreated and caused his death.
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