Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse by Dolin Eric Jay

Author:Dolin, Eric Jay [Dolin, Eric Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780871406682
Amazon: 0871406683
Goodreads: 25622736
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2016-04-18T07:00:00+00:00

Keeper Elson Small milking his cow at the St. Croix River Lighthouse in Maine.

Mule Patty, always good

Caused no trouble where she stood

Always ready and seldom sick

Died of old age without a kick.

Pets were quite common at lighthouses, especially dogs and cats, which not only provided loving companionship but also served other valuable purposes. Cats killed rats and mice that might otherwise have raided the lighthouse’s pantry, and dogs provided protection and kept a watchful eye on their owners. In performing this last task, a dog at Mount Desert Rock Lighthouse became a lifesaver. One sunny summer’s day in 1896, the keeper’s son went outside to play, and soon wandered off without his mother noticing. A half hour later, the family dog ran into house, sopping wet and barking wildly. The keeper’s wife, thinking that the dog had dragged another piece of driftwood from the surf and wanted to show her his find, shooed him back outside to dry off. But when he returned moments later and dropped the boy’s drenched hat at her feet, she knew something was terribly wrong. She bolted from the house, following the dog to the shoreline, where she found her son lying unconscious on the rocks, his clothes in tatters and his body bruised. It became clear to her what had happened: Her boy had fallen in, and the dog had rescued him, dragging his body over the rocks onto the shore. According to a contemporary account, he “soon recovered from the effects of the accident that had so nearly turned the lonely light station into a place of mourning.”

One dog rumored to have saved numerous children from drowning was Milo, a large Newfoundland who was owned by keeper George B. Taylor, and lived in the late 1850s at Egg Rock Lighthouse, located about a mile off Nahant, Massachusetts. Tales of Milo’s lifesaving actions were told far and wide, and even crossed the Atlantic, catching the attention of the popular English artist Edwin Henry Landseer, who was best known for his often oversentimental paintings of animals. In this vein, Landseer produced two paintings of Milo, the more dramatic of which is titled He Is Saved. It shows an exhausted Milo resting on some rocks, cradling in his hefty paws the keeper’s young son, Fred, who is unconscious, having just been dragged not a moment too soon from the ocean’s clutches. The painting became famous throughout America, and beyond, and was reproduced in multiple prints by Currier & Ives, all of which only added to Milo’s legend, and to the general romanticized view of lighthouse keepers’ lives.

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