Early lightkeepers were known as “wickies” due to all the work they did on the lard oil-powered (later kerosene) lamps. They refilled the oil canisters, trimmed the wicks to keep smoke from darkening the lenses and wiped sea scum from the lighthouse windows. They painted and repainted everything, cleaned mountains of guano from the buildings and kicked dead fish that washed up back into the ocean.
At some lighthouses in deeper seas, the keepers tied ropes around themselves to keep from being swept into the abyss. (Up in Humboldt County, there’s evidence of a 150-foot-tall rogue wave striking a lighthouse.) In the open Pacific, there are no such protections. One man trying to reach his lighthouse by boat was battered so badly by waves, he simply died a few days later.
And keepers dealt with a constant ringing in the ears, thanks to the foghorns. Dennis Powers writes in his 2007 book,
Ever since she can remember, Desiree Heveroh wanted to be a lighthouse keeper on the East Brother Light Station, a three quarter-acre speck of an island in the San Francisco Bay. After applying three times, the Richmond resident finally got her wish in 2020, when Covid shut down the island’s public bed-and-breakfast, and she was called in for maintenance and warding off marine squatters.
Heveroh took a boat out to meet her fellow keeper, a sea captain, and settled into a small Victorian abode with unbeatable 360-degree views. That’s when the power went out.
“The submarine cable failed, and we were literally stranded on the island. There was a boat on a hoist, but that only works when you have power,” she recalls. The sea captain eventually had to leave for work elsewhere. “He strapped his dog to his chest, pushed a kayak off the island and paddled himself to the mainland. And then it was just me.”
Desiree Heveroh was a keeper on the East Brother Light Station in the San Francisco Bay from 2020 to 2021. (Desiree Heveroh)
For the next two months, Heveroh lived her own version of Tom Hanks’ “Cast Away” – although replace Wilson the Volleyball with a helpful raven she named Edgar Allen. She couldn’t shower more than once a week, due to no water pressure, and she canned her own food because freezers weren’t operational. It was rough living like it was the 1800s, but she made the best of the rent-free situation.
“I grew a garden. I trained a raven. I had a baby duckling. I learned a language. All the things you say you’re going to do, I did,” Heveroh says. “I didn’t look at clocks or calendars, and it was as glorious as it sounds.”
It takes many — sometimes odd — factors to become a lighthouse keeper. First, you need a lighthouse. In the Bay there are plenty. The surge of marine traffic following the 1850s Gold Rush saw them built everywhere from deadly open-ocean waters to rocky coastal cliffs and inside the sheltered Bay, where several lighthouses continue to aid navigators.
East Brother Light Station was built in 1874, after crews blasted the top off an island north of what’s now the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. It was the home of many lighthouse keepers and their families, who averted ship collisions and groundings with a foghorn and a beaming, beehive-shaped Fresnel lens. The U.S. Coast Guard automated the station in 1969, and in 1980 – thanks to heroic efforts from preservationists – it reopened as a charming inn where anybody can stay for a one-of-a-kind vacation. (You just can’t shower, if you’re only staying a night.)
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Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
