The Tribune

IN 1909, the New York Herald wrote that Bahamian lighthouses were considered more reliable than those of our southern neighbors.

“The great trouble seems to be the eccentricity of the lighthouse keepers on those islands where the lighthouse keepers on those islands where the British and American governments have no concerns,” shipmasters wrote. “The mariners say they have confidence in [Bahamian lighthouses], because the know what it will do.”

A few years later, we learn of a tragedy that befell the keeper of Elbow Reef Light, in Hope Town Abaco. Early in November of 1913, a stonemason named Percy Taylor died while working for the lighthouse department at Elbow Cay, presumably while working on the high tower. The following June worse took place there, when Mrs. Sarah Farrington, wife to assistant keeper John H. Farrington, “died suddenly on Sunday morning, leaving four children, the youngest of whom is three months old.” The staff at Nassau Tribune sent condolences to the new widower.

We look at some of the smaller lighthouses in the northern Bahamas – Abaco, Eleuthera, Andros, and Grand Bahama, and cays, and any stories therefrom. Palmetto Point Lighthouse in central Eleuthera is a functional navigational aid marked on charts. It can also be rented as a “a spacious, well-appointed residence with a living area, dining area, and three bedrooms.” Its height of focal plane is 3 feet, with a fixed white light, and more intense flash every five seconds. It may be seen for 18 nautical miles. Established in 1992, it’s open to the public.

Pinders Point Lighthouse on Grand Bahama was built in the late 1700s and alerted sailing craft of “craggy coastlines and treacherous shoals.” We learn that every sundown a Mr. Samuel Pinder, “a descendant of Pinders Point, lights the torch, and at daybreak extinguishes it.” It is located where it is because the creek inlet just west of the settlement of Pinders Point and east of Hepburn Town, was a point of entry to the island of Grand Bahama. So mailboats and other small-to-midsize vessels anchored there. “What was once a rugged architectural structure, built from lye and limestone, it became a modern-day cinderblock lighthouse in the mid-1900s. The building was restored in 2009, including repainting, repair of the stairs, replacement and reactivation of the light.”

In July, 1963 an Orlando paper reported how the cabin cruiser named Hot Spur sent a mayday from Pinders Point, and their progress was monitored by the Coast Guard helicopter until it reached West End. After all, Freeport is the busiest harbor behind Nassau.

Cupid Cay Lighthouse in Governor’s Harbor Eleuthera is 39 feet above sea level, and flashes a white light every four seconds. Located between northwest Eleuthera (Current) and Rose Island leading to Nassau New Providence, Six Shilling Cay is a shallow islet less than a mile long, including off-lying rocks, just 50 feet wide. Fleeming Channel is a mile wide and connects deep water with the bight of Eleuthera, leading to the Exumas. Late on the night of December 11, 1944, while chasing a German submarine, a US Navy sub chaser snagged herself in the reefs of Six Shilling Cay. Her commander, Charles Tobin, and crew fought to save their ship and ultimately succeeded.

Known as The Old Lighthouse of Little Harbour, southeastern Great Abaco, this light was seen by Randolph Johnston in 1952 when he arrived with his family on a wooden schooner. It was established in 1889 and the first lighthouse keeper and his wife were the area’s only residents. A small tower was destroyed by Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and then automated. The new steel framework tower itself was blown over by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Nowadays these ruins are for the curious to wander through north of Little Harbour, Cherokee Sound, and Hole-in-the-Wall.

Egg Island Light, off Spanish Wells, was built in 1891, with a concrete base and metal skeletal tower 59 feet high. It features a 112-foot-high white square pyramidal tower, solar powered and visible 14 miles with white flashes every three seconds.

A prominent, square-shaped tower was built in the 1800s to guide shipping into Fresh Creek Andros. This structure gave the name to The Lighthouse Club, formed in the 1950s by Swedish industrialist and investor Dr. Axel Wenner-Gren. He hired a designer named Volk to develop and plan the club and Andros Town at Fresh Creek. Starting in 1952, he used local coral rock and sand with cement to create the concrete. He employed residents of Cokely Town, as well as the neighboring islands, to work on the project. In 1954, Andros Town opened and included a hotel and several private residences. The club operated until the early 1960s.

In 1916, the Lighthouse tender Carnarvon was tracked moving between Havana and Bahamian lighthouses, from Cay Say to Inagua and all the lights which needed them. After all, they even supplied St. Kitts and Sombrero Channel Light in the Caribbean. The Tribune reported in the fall of 1922 how visitors from a boat “bravely climbed the winding stairs to the top” of a lighthouse, where “the Light Keeper showed the huge oil tanks, burners, chimneys, and yards of wick.”

The Boston Globe of July 1872 reported that a ship named Adelaide Baker under Captain McLelland carried 2,477 bales of cotton when it grounded in Grand Bahama, freed itself, and made it to Nassau, where salvors were paid out the same day. A barque named Rhea Sylva was also wrecked at Macaras Reef, southern Bahamas, having about a third of her cargo soaked. A Bahamian schooner named Bethel took the remaining dry cargo to Havana.

The New York Daily Herald of 1876 spoke of the brigantine Navasota under Captain Hooper being wrecked at Powels Cay Reef in Great Abaco in end May, with only a fifth of her cargo being saved. The brig Anna M. Knight, under Captain Drinkwater, was also wrecked not far away, at Cherokee Sound, with some cargo saved. The same paper detailed some wrecks in Bahamas for May 1866, including a schooner that grounded and was freed from Bimini Bank. The schooner, Margaret Evans, under Captain Eliakim Studley Jr, went ashore at Manjack Cay, Abaco, but limped to Green Turtle Cay for repairs. A steamer named Bolivian under Captain Couch went ashore near Hole in the Wall and got free by throwing cargo overboard. Wreckers salvaged that cargo and sold at auction.

Man Island sits north of Harbour Island and astride the southern limit of Devil’s Backbone reef. There is a light there 59-feet high on a concrete base, shaped like a square pyramid. It’s white, solar powered, flashes a white light three times every 15 seconds, and it’s little known. The New York Daily Herald in September 1872 speaks of passengers of the sidewheel steamer Bienville rowing for three days in a lifeboat to James Cistern, Eleuthera, to escape a burning ship. Overall, five boats made it to shore, with one of the boats overturned at night with nine persons drowned. Captain Maury and the American consul in Nassau sent messages along Eleuthera requesting that beacon fires - temporary lighthouses – be erected along the shore to help the missing lifeboats.

Another boat landed in San Salvador – then known as Watling’s Island. Soon a schooner sent by the consul at Harbour Island came to their aid and took them to Nassau. In total of six lifeboats, five landed with survivors and one was missing and presumed overwhelmed at sea, indeed a hostile place no matter how many fires are lit or lighthouses erected.