One mile west of Tillamook Head on the Oregon coast sits a lonely rock with an empty seagull-poo-splattered lighthouse. This is its story.
On October 21, 1879, four laborers were put on the rock. The rest of the crew followed five days later. Putting men on the rock entailed stringing a 4 ½” line from the U.S. Revenue Cutter, Thomas Corwin, to the rock. The men would then use a “breeches buoy” to cross the line. With the cutter rolling and pitching in the swells, the line was never taut, and the transported fellow was often drug [dragged?] through the icy water.
The first two weeks of construction found the crew totally exposed to the elements. Barren of caves, overhangs or ledges, the rock could not even provide minimal shelter. The workers chipped, chiseled, and blasted away. And then it hit.
January 2, 1880. A dying Nor’easter*. The seas crashed above the crest of the rock. Rocks flew as breakers tore off chunks of the rock and tossed them at will. The perilous storm pounded the rock. The storehouse was swept away taking most of their tools and provisions. Then the water tank, the traveler line and the roof of the blacksmith shop were ripped away. Clinging on for life, the men stayed in their shelter, the safest place on the rock. Hungry, soaked, and with no place to go.
The lighthouse is now a decertified columbarium (the site is broken, but has a great picture).
* (squidocto points out that this couldn’t have been a nor’easter, as they are, well, in the northeast (USA). A little digging reveals that this was The Great Gale of 1880, which doesn’t sound so bad (“gale” just doesn’t sound so scary) until you read about the damage it did.)
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Now that’s some romance.
But are your storms there nor’easters? Aren’t they nor-westers?
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