Katie Walker did not come from a lighthouse family and was horrified by the bleak situation of the lighthouse she ended up in, yet, like so many other lighthouse women, she showed an extraordinary devotion to looking after the light. She was a German immigrant and met Jacob Walker while she was waiting tables at the boardinghouse where he dined. Jacob was keeper of Sandy Hook light in New Jersey. He taught her English, fell in love with her, and persuaded her to marry him. The Sandy Hook light was situated on a promontory in a picturesque setting with a good road into town so that contact with friends and neighbors was easy. Unfortunately, in the 1870s Jacob was appointed to another lighthouse in a very different location. This was Robbins Reef light, a squat tower on a concrete platform on the west side of New York Bay's main channel. The accommodations were cramped in the extreme. The kitchen and dining room were squashed into a circular extension built at the base of the tower, and there were two bedrooms above in the tower itself. The views of Staten Island and Brooklyn were no compensation for the rural life that Katie had begun to enjoy at Sandy Hook. She was so unhappy when they first arrived she thought she would be unable to stay; she later recalled, “When I first came to Robbins Reef, the sight of water, whichever way I looked, made me lonesome. I refused to unpack my trunks at first, but gradually, a little at a time, I unpacked. After a while they were all unpacked and I stayed on.”
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As so many women have done in similar situations, she decided she would have to make the best of it. She set about making the place as comfortable as possible. She helped her husband with his lighthouse duties, and she brought up their two children. When the children reached school age, she rowed them across to Staten Island every morning and collected them in the afternoon. In 1886, when the children had grown up and left home, Jacob fell ill and died of pneumonia. He was buried in a Staten Island cemetery. His last words to his wife were “Mind the light, Katie.” For several weeks, she debated whether to leave Robbins Reef, but she continued to look after the light and after a while decided to apply for the keeper's post. She was under five feet tall, and the Lighthouse Board had doubts about her fitness for the job. However, she was obviously capable of handling the lighthouse boat and had shown herself able to manage the light and its machinery on her own, so they agreed to her appointment. They were well rewarded for their faith in her, because she continued to manage the light for the next thirty-five years, during which time she was responsible for more than fifty rescues in New York Harbor.
It is curious how many of the American lighthouse women seemed to become strangely attached to the lonely but demanding pattern of life on their seabound rocks and islands. Instead of gratefully heading for the mainland and a cottage in the country on the death of their fathers or husbands, they often made a deliberate choice to continue tending the lights, keeping a watch on passing ships, and rescuing people who got into trouble. None showed more dedication to the task than Ida Lewis, the most famous of all of America's female lighthouse keepers.
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Like Grace Darling, she became a heroine while still in her twenties, but unlike Grace Darling, Ida Lewis lived on to the age of sixty-nine and carried out a succession of rescues over a period of more than fifty years. Born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1842, she was the daughter of Captain Hosea Lewis, a coast pilot. In 1853, he was appointed keeper of Lime Rock light, which was on a small island in Newport Harbor less than half a mile from the shore. For several years, Captain Lewis and his family continued to live in Newport because the first light on Lime Rock was no more than a beacon with a shed alongside to provide some temporary shelter. In 1857, however, a solid four-square building with a low pitched roof was built on the island, and the family moved in.
The traditional lighthouses of New England have inspired some memorable paintings by Edward Hopper and have been the subject of thousands of photographs. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials, and tend to be considerably more picturesque than most British lighthouses. Unhappily, Lime Rock light looked nothing like the usual picture most of us have of a lighthouse. There was no tower, and the light was simply incorporated into one side of the keeper's house. On the seaward-facing side there was a narrow, square-sectioned column projecting slightly from the building with a three-sided window at the top containing the lamp.
The interior of the lighthouse was as plain as the white-painted exterior. A Newport journalist visited the place when Ida Lewis had become famous and described the interior in some detail. On the ground floor there was a parlor, a hall, a dining room, and a kitchen. On the floor above were three bedrooms with a passageway leading to the lantern. The walls were bare, and “Ida's own particular sanctum is fitted with a cheaply finished cottage set, only remarkable as exhibiting a rude painting of a sinking wreck upon the headboard of her couch.”
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He noted that a sewing machine “and some little feminine nick-nacks complete the interior.” The best aspect of the house was the view from the upstairs windows. Ida's room commanded a fine vista of the harbor looking toward the town.
Within a few months of the family's moving into the house on Lime Rock, Captain Lewis had a stroke that left him so paralyzed he was no longer able to carry out his duties. His wife took over as the official keeper, but in addition to her disabled husband, she had four children to look after. She increasingly relied on Ida, the eldest child, to maintain the light. Ida was fifteen at this time, and during the next few years she also took responsibility for rowing her younger sister and two brothers to school. Although the island was only half a mile from the shore, a strong or gale-force wind would rapidly turn the peaceful waters of the harbor into a mass of short, steep waves. Captain Lewis would keep a lookout from his window when his children were due to return in the boat and frequently feared for their lives when they rowed back in heavy weather. He told a newspaper reporter:
I have watched them till I could not bear to look any longer, expecting any moment to see them swamped, and the crew at the mercy of the waves, and then I have turned away and said to my wife, let me know if they get safe in, for I could not endure to see them perish and realize that we were powerless to save them.
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Ida's early experience with the lighthouse boat stood her in good stead over the years. Her first recorded rescue took place in September 1859, when she was eighteen. Four college students were sailing a catboat across the harbor after dark. They were larking about and one of them climbed up the mast and began rocking the boat so violently that it capsized. None of them could swim, but they managed to cling to the upturned hull. Ida heard their shouts, and she immediately launched the boat and set off toward them. She later said that by the time she reached them they were “two-thirds deadâawfully weak and white-faced, and almost inanimate.” She managed to haul them into her boat over the stern and took them back to the lighthouse, where the family helped to revive them.
The next rescue took place on a freezing day in February 1866. Three soldiers rashly decided to return to Fort Adams in a decrepit old skiff. They managed to get some way out into the harbor when one of them put his foot through a rotten plank in the bottom of the boat, which rapidly filled and sank to the gunwales. Ida Lewis spotted the men in trouble and rowed to their assistance. Two of the men abandoned their grip on the old skiff and attempted to swim toward her, but the cold overcame them and before they could reach her they sank and drowned. When Ida reached the skiff, she found the third man was so numb with cold he could scarcely move, and she had to heave his body unaided into her boat to save his life.
The following year she rescued three shepherds who got into trouble, and in November of the same year, she saved two sailors. But the rescue that captured the headlines took place on March 29, 1869. The wind had risen to gale force during the night, and when Ida's mother woke in the morning, she was horrified to see a capsized boat drifting among the foaming waves. There were two men clinging to the upturned hull. According to one report, Ida did not even stop to put on shoes or an overcoat but hurried outside in a thin brown poplin dress and stockings with a white shawl around her shoulders. The weather was atrocious, with a fierce wind, snow, and sleet sweeping across the gray waters of the harbor. With an angry surf breaking on the island, it took Ida fifteen minutes to launch the boat and get clear of the shore. As she approached the stricken boat, the story goes, one of the men cried in despair, “It's only a girl,” and letting go of his hold, he sank beneath the waves. He reappeared moments later, and Ida grabbed his hair, managed to drag him to the stern of her boat, and hauled him aboard over the transom. The second man was almost paralyzed with cold, and he too had to be heaved aboard. With both men lying almost unconscious on the floorboards, Ida headed back through the breaking waves toward Lime Rock. Back in the lighthouse, she and her mother spent hours reviving the two men, who proved to be soldiers from Fort Adams, as well. They had apparently been in a hurry to get back to the fort before their leave expired and had engaged a local boy to row them across to the promontory. The boy was drowned when the boat capsized.
What is curious about the whole episode is that most of the accounts indicate that Ida Lewis carried out the rescue single-handedly, but a painting that was later commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard shows her younger brother, Rudolf, with her in the boat. The artist received instructions about the clothes Ida wore and how she handled the boat and must presumably have been told whether Ida was assisted in the rescue. While the presence of her brother in no way diminishes the courage and determination she showed on that winter morning, it does help to explain how a young woman was able to haul into her boat two men who were helpless with cold and weighed down by soaking-wet clothes.
The news of this rescue provoked a public reaction similar to the adulation experienced by Grace Darling thirty-two years earlier. The local people honored Ida Lewis with a special parade on Independence Day, 1869, and presented her with a new boat built of mahogany with red velvet cushions and gold-plated rowlocks. The Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York awarded her their silver medal, as well as a check for $100. Articles devoted to the rescue appeared in the
New York Tribune
and other major newspapers, and her picture was featured on the cover of
Harper's Weekly
with the caption “The heroine of Newport.”
The Lime Rock lighthouse suffered the same fate as the Longstone lighthouse, becoming a place of pilgrimage. Captain Lewis sat in his wheelchair counting visitors and reckoned that in one summer alone 9,000 people came out to the island hoping to catch a glimpse of Ida Lewis. The most famous of the visitors in 1869 was the President of the United States, General Ulysses S. Grant. He arrived with Vice President Colefax and was rowed out to the lighthouse. According to the local legend, the President got his feet wet as he stepped ashore. “I have come to see Ida Lewis,” he said, “and to see her I'd get wet up to my armpits if necessary.”
Among the numerous letters and gifts that followed the news of the rescue were many offers of marriage. Ida Lewis was persuaded to accept one of these, and in 1870, she married Captain William Wilson of Black Rock, Connecticut. Whether Captain Wilson was unable to accommodate himself to Ida's fame and way of life, or whether Ida was reluctant to change her island routineâor whether they were simply incompatibleâis not altogether clear, but in less than two years, they separated. She kept the name Mrs. Lewis-Wilson but reverted to her single status and never remarried. In any case, she had more than enough to keep her busy. In 1872, her father died and her mother was officially appointed keeper in his place, but she fell ill and was soon a helpless invalid. Ida found herself not only having to carry out the daily lighthouse duties but also having to look after her mother. Eventually, Ida's years of service as unofficial keeper were recognized, and in 1879 she was herself appointed keeper and received the annual salary of $750.
In 1881, she carried out another rescue that was almost as hazardous as that in the storm of March 1869. Once again, it took place in freezing winter weather, and again it was men from the garrison at Fort Adams who were involved. Much of the harbor had frozen over, and in the late afternoon of February 4, two soldiers who were walking across the ice when it gave way beneath them found themselves up to their necks in icy water. Ida heard their frantic cries and ran across the ice toward them, bringing a rope with her. She flung the rope to them, and by the time she had helped one of the men out of the water, her brother had come to her aid and together they got the second man to safety. The U.S. Life Saving Service was so impressed by her bravery on this occasion that it presented her with its highest award for her “unquestionable nerve, presence of mind, and dashing courage.” It pointed out that the ice was in a very dangerous condition and noted that shortly afterward two other men fell through the ice and were drowned in the immediate neighborhood of the rescue.
Ida Lewis's position as a national heroine was consolidated. She was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal “for rescuing from drowning at various times at least thirteen persons,” and received a silver medal from the Massachusetts Humane Society. From the great mansions of Newport came a stream of society ladies to shake her hand, including Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Belmont, and Mrs. Vanderbilt. She was also visited by General Sherman. According to Ida, the general “sat out on the rock for nearly an hour, asking me questions about my life, and saying he was glad to get to such a peaceful place.”
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