Coast Guard honors lightkeepers with plaque

Word passed down through oral tradition tells residents of Cohasset and Scituate that the designer of the original Minot’s Lighthouse was so embarrassed by its catastrophic failure during a storm on the night of April 16/17, 1851, that he ordered the entirety of the light’s remains to be immediately salvaged from the sea floor and taken away.  Historians are still trying to prove or disprove that story.

This week, the Coast Guard took up the challenge.

On Monday morning, the 175-foot buoy tender Abbie Burgess, homeported to Rockland, Maine, cruised from the Coast Guard’s North End of Boston base of operations to the waters to the northwest of today’s Minot Light, the granite structure that in 1860 replaced the lost tower.  The trip that got the cutter there took a little more than an hour, but the road that brought the various players aboard the vessel that day stretched out much longer.

By requesting the right to place an underwater plaque somewhere on or near the site of the 1851 lighthouse tragedy in memory of lost lightkeepers Joseph Wilson and Joseph Antoine, the nonprofit Foundation for Coast Guard History set in motion a plan bigger than it ever imagined would take place.

“Many people see the placing of the plaque as the icing on the cake,” said Vic Mastone, director of the Massachusetts Board of Underwater Archaeological Resources.  “But in reality it was the flour that was thrown in to get the batter started.”

Mastone, who had often thought of conducting an archaeological survey of the debris field of the 1851 tragedy, met with the Coast Guard’s Atlantic Area Historian, Dr. William Thiesen, and together they began assembling a team that could pull off such an event with benefits that would affect the working lives of dozens of service personnel.  The proposed archaeological site visit would serve as a training mission — or, rather, a collection of training exercises — for Coast Guard divers, the buoy tender’s crew, and even an anti-terrorism robotics specialist. 

The 11 divers, gathered from Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSSTs) in Boston, New York and San Diego, stood to be the stars of the show.  Their mission was to lay out a searchable grid under the guidance of Mastone and Lieutenant (junior grade) Keith Meverden, a primary investigator working for the Coast Guard’s Sector Lake Michigan out of Madison, Wisc., and then explore the sea floor for any signs of the lighthouse’s remains.  The Abbie Burgess’ crew played a supporting role, offering an excellent platform from which the divers could operate on the tender’s spacious buoy deck. 

What was the end value of the exercise to the divers and the tender crew?  Should the need ever arise, the divers have now had valuable in-the-water experience laying out a searchable pattern on the sea floor, the methodology of which could theoretically be applied to a search for a lost boat or plane, and the tender crew is now trained in how to support the divers in such an effort.

As Mastone said, “The archaeology is just the fun part.  There are much more important things happening here than a search for artifacts.”

Monday’s dives returned immediate results.  Splashing into unseasonably warm 59-degree waters the divers laid their grid, familiarized themselves with the bottom, reported excellent visibility up to 15 feet, and began their search.  Magnetometer scans of the area earlier in the spring showed a significant magnetic anomaly southwest of the lighthouse that helped define the original search area.

As the divers ascended from their first plunge, Meverden approached retired Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Sandy Schwaab.

“How big would a power cable be for a light like this one?” he asked.

“Oh, about three or four inches in diameter,” Schwaab answered.

“Well, we think they’ve found it.”

But the rest of the day’s dives proved a bit more frustrating.  An iron ladder, bits of an iron grate, and some iron poles raised hopes, but not eyebrows.  The big score, the lighthouse’s lantern room, still remained undocumented.

Adjusting their field for day two on Tuesday, the divers enjoyed the added “eyes” of MSST Boston’s “ROV,” or remotely operated vehicle, guided by GM1 Carl Shipley.  Intending to send the small, twin-propeller robot to work near the divers, Shipley found that the current near the light was too strong for the device.  Instead of fighting it, he let the current take it the way it wanted to, away from the ledge.  Serendipitously, his resignation to temporarily submit to the power of the sea led to the most considerable discovery of the week, as the ROV cast its lights on a gathering of suspected tools and other construction materials.  The divers marked the site for further exploration later in the week.

On Wednesday morning, dive operations halted for a remembrance ceremony for the two lightkeepers lost in the 1851 storm.  Thiesen, Schwaab, Coast Guard Historian Dr. Robert Browning and others spoke briefly before the deck crew of the Abbie Burgess prepared the 5,000 pound “sinker” to which the Foundation for Coast Guard History’s plaque was affixed for dropping over the port side.  Once the stone was safely in place and ready for its final descent, Chief Warrant Officer Paul Dilger, commanding officer of the tender, offered a brief and final salute.

“Keeper Antoine, Keeper Wilson, your sacrifices have not been forgotten, and they will not be forgotten.  May you rest in peace.”  The Coast Guard personnel saluted as “Taps” was played and the sinker was released into the ocean, ultimately landing squarely between rocks on the sea floor, 31 feet below.

With the ceremony completed, the divers returned to work, and the gathered historians and archaeologists continued their discussions.  All agreed that if enough archaeological evidence could be produced from the dives, an extension of the National Register of Historic Places designation for Minot’s Lighthouse should be sought to include the debris field.  Mastone, too, dreamed of another major possibility, an underwater preserve that could feature an historic trail for divers.     

“The plaque sitting on the bottom has me thinking that we could have markers leading recreational divers from the plaque to say an artifact 20 feet away,” he said.  “From there, they could find the next item of interest, and so on.”  Should Mastone’s office have the chance to create it, the preserve would be the first of its kind in Massachusetts waters.

And the placing of the plaque came with other “firsts” as well.  “This is the Coast Guard’s first step in recognizing the losses of lighthouse keepers,” said Coast Guard Historian Dr. Robert Browning.  “I think that we’re going to try to do a lot more of these events in the future.”