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00:01Rock lighthouses.
00:03No matter what the sea throws at them, they stand firm.
00:08This is awesome.
00:09Join me for a voyage to the last outposts of civilization.
00:14Oh, come on.
00:16Where you need to invent your way out of trouble if you want to survive.
00:20They got the radar to work through an upturned bicycle handle.
00:25He was listening to his daughter playing piano
00:28and came up with this concept of a foghorn.
00:32I mean, these are absolute game changers.
00:33It's a story of adventure.
00:36This coastline is epic.
00:39Look at the scale of these cliffs and these rocks.
00:42And danger.
00:43When I turned around to see the wave, I thought we were done for.
00:46We'll discover how they were designed.
00:48This really was a stroke of genius.
00:52And meet their hidden heroes.
00:54There was this absolute sense of mission.
00:57The night stays lit come what may.
01:00These are the secrets of some of the most extraordinary structures ever built.
01:07This time, I'm crossing the Atlantic to discover a truly pioneering lighthouse.
01:13We can see it further.
01:15What's preventing it is the curvature of the earth.
01:18Built with a city's future hanging in the balance.
01:21If you don't have the harbor, you don't have Boston.
01:23Dogged by tragedy.
01:25All those people drowned.
01:26It wouldn't surprise me if that lighthouse was cursed.
01:29Caught in the crossfire of revolution.
01:32All eight men who were killed were shot in the back.
01:36They blow up the lighthouse in an act of just pure spite.
01:39This is the story of Boston Light.
01:48This is Boston Harbor on the northeast coast of the United States.
01:55I'm sailing in the same waters as an intrepid group of English settlers who, in 1630, crossed the Atlantic for
02:02the New World and a promised land of boundless opportunity.
02:06They established the city of Boston in one of the finest natural harbors in the world, sheltered from the North
02:13Atlantic by a cluster of islands.
02:16And this harbor was to play a crucial part in the prosperity of the settlers trying to build new lives
02:23in North America.
02:25It was the dawn of an exciting new era.
02:28These shores opened up a world of opportunity for global trade.
02:34As more settlers arrived fleeing religious persecution in Britain, a thriving economy grew up in Boston.
02:41And it became the busiest port in North America.
02:45Without the harbor, there's no Boston.
02:47And it is what gives Boston access to the rest of the world.
02:50The Puritans came over here and they found something that they could do, which is to build ships and to
02:56trade.
02:57New England and Boston are really important sources for fish, particularly dried fish.
03:02So these guys are taking something that doesn't have a lot of intrinsic value.
03:06They don't find gold here.
03:07They don't find silver.
03:09They don't find the kind of resources they were hoping for.
03:11But they take codfish and turn that into the commodity that can make them rich.
03:17And it's not just that they can catch fish here.
03:19They have the lumber they can use to build ships and barrels to ship this stuff around.
03:24By the end of the 1600s, Boston is probably the most prosperous town in the British North American colonies.
03:36Boston's main trade routes are with Europe, the West Indies, and crucially, Britain.
03:41The transatlantic trade route is really important because British North America is part of Britain.
03:48It's still relying on Britain for a lot of important goods and services.
03:53It's really important to see Boston as a British city in North America, right down to the revolution.
04:00Boston's economy is booming, but disaster is never far from port.
04:06It's absolutely essential that the harbour remain navigable.
04:09If you don't have the harbour, you don't have Boston.
04:14It's a beautiful, calm summer's day out here today, but don't be fooled.
04:19The weather in the sea state can quickly change and become vicious
04:24because we're right at the gateway here to the Atlantic Ocean.
04:29You know, if we were just to keep going in that direction,
04:32the next piece of land we'd come across would be Portugal, 3,000 miles away.
04:42Countless ships were wrecked on their way to Boston.
04:45Not in the open sea, but amongst the perilous unmarked reefs, rocks,
04:50and shifting sandbars of Boston Harbour itself.
04:55In 1713, three ships were lost in two months,
04:59along with valuable cargoes desperately needed by the growing city.
05:03Any threat to the maritime economy was a threat to Boston's very survival.
05:08Its protection would come in the shape of a purpose-built beacon
05:11at the mouth of the harbour.
05:14Boston Light, the oldest continually operated lighthouse in the USA.
05:23The 89 feet tall tower is perched on top of a tiny, rocky piece of land
05:29known as Little Brewster Island.
05:31And when I say tiny, I mean tiny.
05:35The whole island's only 600 feet from end to end,
05:40and its highest point is a mere 18 feet above sea level.
05:44But despite its precarious position out here in the harsh waters of the Atlantic,
05:52Boston Light has stood firm against some of the worst weather this part of the world can muster.
05:58From the biting temperatures of a harsh New England winter,
06:02to hurricane-force winds and brutal sea storms.
06:08But this majestic tower isn't the first to have stood on this spot.
06:13The original Boston Light was built in 1716,
06:16before the United States even existed,
06:19when that island over there and these waters were all parts of the British Empire.
06:30Boston Harbour is large.
06:32But because of its myriad of islands, shifting tides and hidden rocks,
06:37it's difficult to navigate.
06:39We're quite isolated out here.
06:40I mean, when you look out east, I mean, it's just Atlantic Ocean.
06:45Yeah.
06:45Is that part of the reason why this was the chosen location?
06:50Yes.
06:51That's right at the entrance to the harbour, basically.
06:55For about a couple of hundred years,
06:57pretty much all the shipping traffic came in and out right here,
07:00and you would have had just an absolute parade of ships of all kinds every day.
07:06At the time the lighthouse was built,
07:08there were limited safe channels for larger ships heading to the port.
07:13It's a fairly narrow channel.
07:15Yes.
07:15Yeah, and you did have accidents, and there were rocks out here, shag rocks,
07:19there were shipwrecks there.
07:21You know, in storms or fog, it was a narrow enough channel in good weather,
07:26but in rough weather or fog, it could be pretty treacherous.
07:31What was the key driver to having a lighthouse built here?
07:36Well, the merchants of Boston were clamouring for a lighthouse,
07:39especially there was a merchant by the name of John George
07:41who petitioned the colonial government for a lighthouse.
07:45There were definitely shipping accidents around here
07:47before there was a lighthouse
07:48because the shipping was picking up a lot by the early 1700s.
07:53People talk about lighthouses saving lives, which they do,
07:56but protecting shipping, protecting goods was the number one thing.
07:59Immediately in shipwrecks, I'm thinking about the loss of life,
08:02but when you've got cargo coming in into a port
08:05that had such a huge significance for the economy,
08:09something had to change. Yeah.
08:13The Boston Light was completed in 1716
08:17at a cost of £2,385,
08:21equivalent to around £300,000 today.
08:24The cost was to be recouped by a tax of a penny a tonne
08:29on all vessels coming in and out of the harbour,
08:31with smaller vessels paying two shillings.
08:34Do we know what that first, the original Boston Light, looked like?
08:38We know it was about a 50-foot stone tower,
08:41which means it was a fair amount shorter
08:42than the one that's here today.
08:44Uh-huh.
08:44It had a wooden lantern.
08:46It's probably a pretty rudimentary tower, really.
08:48Just a rubble stone tower, wooden lantern, tallow candles,
08:54and apparently they had a problem with leaks in the stone tower,
08:57so they eventually sheathed it in wood,
08:59so it probably looks like a wooden tower.
09:05The Boston Light was lit for the first time
09:08on the 14th of September, 1716,
09:11by its new keeper, George Worthylake.
09:15Yet the omens for America's first lighthouse
09:18were bad from the start.
09:22Worthylake decided he needed to go into Boston
09:24to pick up his pay.
09:26He went with his wife and one of their two daughters,
09:29their 15-year-old daughter, Ann, and the family servant, George Cutler,
09:34went into Boston on a Sunday, attended church,
09:37stayed overnight, picked up his pay on Monday morning.
09:39They were traveling in a sloop, a sail vessel,
09:42back towards the island here,
09:44anchored off of Boston Light here off the island,
09:46and Shadwell, the slave, paddled a canoe out
09:50to meet the landing party.
09:52So there were six people.
09:53There was no storm going on, there were no big waves,
09:56but as Shadwell was paddling this canoe back to the island,
10:00for some reason it was upset, it overturned,
10:03and all six of those people drowned right here.
10:06In these waters, what, immediately around?
10:10Yeah, we don't know precisely where,
10:11but probably right in front of us here.
10:14Wow.
10:14So the Worthy Lake's other daughter and a friend
10:17were watching from the island when this happened.
10:21Then, disaster struck again,
10:24this time for the temporary keeper who took over from Worthy Lake.
10:30A man named Robert Saunders came out as the second keeper
10:33a few days later, and within a few days, he drowned.
10:40It wouldn't surprise me if it was considered
10:42that the light in Little Brewster Island was cursed or something.
10:46Exactly, I think that's what a lot of people thought.
10:48I always tell people lighthouse keeping wasn't as romantic as you think.
10:52Mm.
10:54But trouble was only just beginning
10:56for North America's first lighthouse.
10:59Over the next 50 years, it would be engulfed by flames,
11:03lashed by storms,
11:04and find itself at the centre of a war zone.
11:20A beacon has been shining a Boston light for over 300 years.
11:25The first, built in 1716, had a rocky start,
11:29but its third keeper, John Hayes,
11:31would turn the lighthouse's fortunes around.
11:35Hayes began with the lantern rip.
11:37He asked for a balcony to be built around the outside,
11:41right at the top,
11:41so that he could clear the glass of the persistent snow and ice
11:46during the relentless New England winters.
11:49But his most radical contribution is just over here.
11:57A cannon!
11:59John Hayes asked for a cannon on the island,
12:02not for defence, but as a warning signal,
12:04to deal with that other punishing feature of Boston's weather,
12:08its notoriously dense fog.
12:11And just as with the lighthouse,
12:14it was the first in North America.
12:17It was usual for ships sailing in foggy conditions to fire a cannon
12:22to warn any nearby vessels to stay away.
12:27Hayes brought this simple system to the lighthouse.
12:30Now, whenever fog descended,
12:33ships entering the harbour fired a blast,
12:35and the keeper could fire the lighthouse cannon back,
12:38giving the mariner a fair idea of Boston Light's location.
12:43And it served as the fog signal for this lighthouse
12:46for more than 130 years.
12:48It was clearly doing its job as an early warning system,
12:53but Hayes Cannon had its limitations.
12:56An effective fog signal needs to be heard from,
13:00well, several miles out to sea.
13:03But fog can have a dangerous effect on sound.
13:07Bouncing it, deflecting it, stopping it dead.
13:11Navigating by sound alone was a perilous nightmare for mariners.
13:15And for decades, the authorities struggled to find a signal
13:18which would reliably cut through the dense fogs
13:21around Boston Harbour.
13:25Good to meet you.
13:26Very good to meet you.
13:27At Boston Light,
13:28there have been a number of different methods used
13:33to create a fog signal.
13:35I mean, starting with a cannon.
13:37Right.
13:38And a cannon has got the output, right?
13:41It's very, very loud.
13:42Ooh, big loud noise.
13:43But it's also very, very brief.
13:45And it also was very expensive.
13:47The gunpowder, I understand, was more expensive
13:50than they were having to pay the person at the lighthouse
13:52to keep it going.
13:53So they were looking for another solution.
13:55In the early 1800s, they stopped using the cannons
13:59and they started using bells.
14:03Fog bells were used in North American lighthouses
14:06for nearly a century.
14:07But they were hard to hear from a distance,
14:10especially in bad weather.
14:12There were people who complained.
14:15They said that if the wind was blowing a certain way
14:18or whatever, they couldn't hear the bells.
14:20The bells were useless.
14:22The race was on to find a fog signal that truly worked.
14:26In 1853, a Scottish engineer called Robert Fowless invented a machine
14:32that had both the range and the power to cut through.
14:36The steam-powered foghorn was born.
14:39It was based on his observation that low-pitched sounds
14:42travel further than high-pitched sounds.
14:45He was listening to his daughter playing piano.
14:50And he was some distance from the house.
14:53And he noticed that he was hearing more of the low frequencies
14:56than the high frequencies in the sound.
14:59And he went ahead and came up with this concept
15:02of a low-frequency horn.
15:06To test the theory that deeper sounds travel further,
15:09we're going to generate a sound from low to high
15:14and measure how loud it is over two distances
15:17to demonstrate which type of sound will work best
15:20as a warning signal to ships in danger.
15:24Let's get started, then. Sure.
15:26Is this our microphone here? That's right.
15:28Great. That's going to be picking up noise from the truck.
15:31So we'll see how intense they are relative to each other on the screen.
15:35And what, low on the left, high on the right?
15:37Exactly, exactly.
15:39OK. Let's give it a shot. Let's do it.
15:41I'm going to push go.
15:49Oh, that went from low to really high.
15:52OK, so there's the response.
15:54The line on the graph shows the level of volume received by the microphone,
15:58showing the lowest pitch on the left of the line
16:01and the highest pitch on the right.
16:03So what I see on here is that they're roughly all the same intensity.
16:08Exactly.
16:09At this distance, the volume is roughly the same, whether the pitch is low or high.
16:14But let's see what happens if we move back 15 feet.
16:24So up comes the line. That is right, then.
16:27The results of our second test are shown on the yellow line.
16:31Because we've come back that much further, we're picking up the lower frequencies, the lower sounds,
16:36and we're not picking up those higher frequencies, the higher pitched sounds, as much here at all.
16:41So as we've come further back, the intensity of the high frequency is dropping.
16:46Yes, it is. That's right.
16:48The experiment shows that the lower the pitch of a sound, the further away it can be heard.
16:55Boston Light got its first foghorn in 1872 as a warning to ships.
17:01But 150 years previously, it wasn't the ships, but the lighthouse itself that was in danger.
17:10On the evening of the 13th of January, 1720, a fire broke out up top in the lantern room.
17:17The flames quickly grew out of control.
17:20Now, no records exist that detail the extent of the damage caused by the fire.
17:26But we do know that the lighthouse was out of action for a whole month.
17:31Three years later, the lighthouse suffered further damage when a great storm struck the island.
17:37But neither the fire nor the great storm of 1723 would match the violence inflicted on Boston Light in the
17:45years that followed.
17:49During the 1760s and 1770s, the British government imposed a series of unpopular taxes on its North American colonies.
17:58The Americans have been used to governing themselves.
18:02Suddenly, Parliament is saying, well, we can decide how much in taxes you should pay.
18:07And the Americans say, well, no.
18:08This culminated in the famous protest that became known as the Boston Tea Party.
18:15In December 1773, in defiance of a new tax on tea, protesters threw 342 cases of it, worth around three
18:25quarters of a million pounds, into Boston Harbor.
18:32To punish Boston, the British government closed the harbor until the tea was paid for.
18:39It was the closing of Boston Harbor in June of 1774 that really triggers much of the resistance in Massachusetts
18:47to British rule.
18:48You know, up until that point, you probably could have found an accommodation between the British and the Americans.
18:55But after that, the closing of the harbor, the suspending of the Massachusetts government are really the points that turn
19:02this from a rebellion into a revolution.
19:04Fire!
19:07In 1775, a skirmish broke out in a small town near Boston.
19:13This fight between the British Army and the American militia signalled the beginning of the American War of Independence.
19:21Present!
19:23Fire!
19:30Even though I knew what was coming, I was kind of, my whole body was tense.
19:33Oh, now I get to breathe again.
19:37Fifteen miles from Boston Harbor on Lexington Common, David Kemper and the re-enactors of the Lexington Minutemen are going
19:44through their drills.
19:47This American militia were made up of local men who were called Minutemen because they were expected to be ready
19:53to take up arms at a moment's notice.
19:59David, I'm a little bit intimidated coming to talk to you, not only because you have your musket here with
20:04you, not only because you are dressed so elegantly, but there's a lot more of you than there are of
20:10me.
20:10They're always going with me all the time, you know?
20:13So what is it you guys have been doing out here today?
20:15Where we're drilling, I'm the captain of the Lexington Minutemen and I play Captain Parker.
20:21He was the captain back in 1775.
20:25You are representative of a local militia, the local militia here in Lexington.
20:30In Lexington, right, because the governors actually ordered that each town would have a militia and to store arms and
20:38gunpowder and ball and cannon if they could get it.
20:41So this is the local communities within the colonies who are starting to form their own defences against the British
20:50government and the British military who had presence here.
20:53Every town in Massachusetts, every town, not just around Boston.
20:58Every town in all of Massachusetts at the time had a militia or Minut company.
21:04They all had to have a musket in working order.
21:11On the 19th of April, 1775, the Lexington Minutemen, led by Captain Parker, had been warned that the British Army,
21:19known as the Regulars, would be passing through on their way to the nearby town, Concord, to confiscate a stockpile
21:26of arms.
21:27It was the final straw for the locals.
21:30The Minutemen and the Regulars faced off here on Lexington Common.
21:34No one knows which side fired first.
21:38There was a shot.
21:40Over here, somewhere over by a stone wall, a shot run out.
21:43The Regulars just went wild.
21:50They started firing.
21:51At that time, Captain Parker says, quit the field, quit the field.
21:56And so off we run.
21:58We're all running.
21:59It was hugely outnumbered.
22:00They had 900 regulars.
22:03They had 150 come up on the common.
22:06We're running.
22:07All eight men who were killed were shot in the back.
22:13It was a watershed moment, which marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between Britain and its own citizens in
22:22the North American colonies.
22:24How significant was that battle in terms of what then played out in history?
22:30Well, it was the first time that we had something that was really considered a battle.
22:35And it was the first time that we could really say that we had faced against the British Army.
22:40And then Lexington really snowballed throughout the rest of the day.
22:43By the time the soldiers actually got to Concord, the folks there had heard about this massacre that had happened
22:49in Lexington.
22:50They had called for backup.
22:52And so pretty much the exact opposite happened in Concord.
22:55Once the Americans started shooting at the soldiers there, the regulars turned around and ran away instead.
23:02And they ran all the way from Concord back to Boston.
23:06By the time they got back there, pretty much everyone in Massachusetts was following them.
23:13The British were pushed back into Boston.
23:17And the city was surrounded by American militiamen from all over Massachusetts.
23:23They were also joined by militias from the other 13 colonies.
23:27And the first American army was officially formed.
23:31It was a standoff. The British couldn't get out and the Americans couldn't get in.
23:35In June 1775, George Washington is commissioned commanding general of the American army.
23:41He comes here and takes command in Boston.
23:43One of the things that Washington recognizes right away is that indeed the British are being resupplied by sea.
23:50So anything that the Americans can do to hinder that resupply is good for them.
23:55Yeah.
23:55The harbour was a sea of petty warfare, shall we call it.
23:58There were no big major engagements.
24:00But there were engagements on the various islands as the Americans would try to go out and torment the British.
24:06And was one of the islands where that took place out here on Little Brewster Island?
24:10Oh, absolutely. Little Brewster was critical because Little Brewster had the lighthouse.
24:14Of course.
24:15And so in early in July, an American force under Major Joseph Vose hit Brewster Island.
24:21They sacked it. They took this. They took that. You know, did what they could. Then they left.
24:25And about two weeks later, Major Tupper, another American militia commander, landed.
24:31And he was more serious in what he wanted to do and tried to destroy the lighthouse.
24:36So what was the British reaction to the destruction of the Boston Light by the rebels?
24:42Total frustration. It was another annoyance to the British in Boston.
24:46Again, accelerating the feeling on the part of the British commanders that we got to get out of here.
24:52The war in Boston turned in the American army's favour, forcing the British out.
24:58But they wouldn't leave quietly.
25:00In their last gesture to Boston, the final removal of the British troops,
25:05they blow up the lighthouse in an act of just pure meanness and spite.
25:09Yeah. I mean, it's a bit petty, isn't it?
25:11Well, it depends upon your point of view, doesn't it?
25:13They were doing all they could as they left the city to make the city less useful to the American
25:19revolutionaries.
25:26The lighthouse would remain dark for the rest of the war.
25:30But in 1783, it was rebuilt, 25 feet taller and with walls seven and a half feet thick,
25:38to withstand not just the dynamite of retreating armies, but the fury of the elements.
25:44Still standing and operational 239 years later.
25:52Despite being built to cope with the worst weather the Atlantic could throw at it,
25:57the second Boston Light was still under threat.
26:01The whole tower was at risk of collapsing into the sea.
26:14The original Boston lighthouse survived fire and storm,
26:20only to be blown up by the retreating British army during the War of Independence.
26:26It was rebuilt in 1783.
26:30However, just 26 years later, it faced a new challenge for survival.
26:38In 1809, three huge cracks were discovered running almost the entire height of the lighthouse.
26:46Unless something was done, the whole tower was at risk of collapse.
26:51The authorities needed to find a way to fix the problem without replacing the tower.
26:57Their solution was simple, but very clever.
27:02This plastic bottle here represents our lighthouse.
27:06The Boston Light, just out there in the bay.
27:08Now, as with any object, there are forces constantly acting down
27:13through the sides of the bottle or through the walls of the lighthouse.
27:16In this case, that's granite stones and gravity acting down on that mass.
27:22So, if I add a weight on top of the bottle here,
27:28this weight is probably no surprises what's going to happen.
27:31Let's do it anyway.
27:37The bottle gets crushed because the sides, the walls of the structure aren't strong enough
27:44to withstand that additional weight.
27:47Now, this bottle lighthouse has been given additional structural strength
27:52by adding these metal rings around its length.
27:57So, let's try that again with our large weight.
28:07The bottle is now taking the weight of the rock.
28:10My hands there are not holding the rock up at all.
28:13They're purely there for balance to stop it from tipping over.
28:18And the reason it can do that is because these rings are stopping the sides of the bottle,
28:24the sides from our structure, from bulging out, from collapsing down.
28:29And that gives us an additional vertical strength.
28:34So, that's what they did at Boston Light.
28:36Six iron hoops were added to reinforce the tower,
28:41effectively cancelling out the cracks and ensuring the light stayed on.
28:45Nowadays, five aluminium rings have taken the place of the original iron bands,
28:51not only supporting this iconic tower in place,
28:54but providing a distinctive landmark to guide sailors safely to harbour.
29:00At the turn of the 19th century,
29:02it wasn't the strength of the tower that was the problem,
29:05but the strength of the light itself.
29:08Just like the early fog signals, the early lamps weren't up to the job.
29:13In 1810, one enterprising local resident
29:17set out to improve Boston's meagre light.
29:22Armed with an idea and a formidable talent for self-promotion,
29:26he went on to spearhead a huge expansion of the United States Lighthouse Network.
29:35Winslow Lewis patented a lamp that he claimed would revolutionise America's lighthouses.
29:41Here at the National Archives in Boston,
29:43they have original letters which shine a light
29:46on how he transformed his good idea into a nationwide success story.
29:52The oil lamps that were being used were not necessarily seen too far out to sea,
29:57so mariners were having issues knowing where they were when they were coming into port.
30:01So we actually have a letter from 1804 here,
30:05where several mariners in New Bedford complained to the Secretary of the Treasury.
30:10They say specifically here that Boston Light has always been considered a poor light
30:16owing to the construction of the lantern and lamp.
30:19So they looked to Winslow Lewis, who was originally a ship captain in Massachusetts.
30:24He probably would have experienced then this dim light at Boston Light.
30:28Yeah, he definitely had the maritime experience to see the issue with the lighthouse lighting.
30:32Yeah.
30:32He didn't necessarily have experience as an engineer or an expert in lighting per se,
30:38but he did file a patent in 1810 for what he called a new method of lighting lighthouses.
30:44He invented a new lamp then, did he?
30:46He said he invented a new lamp.
30:48Okay.
30:49So he filed a patent for what he called a magnifying and reflecting lantern,
30:54and it was actually very similar to the Argon lamp,
30:56which had been in use in France since the 1780s.
31:00It had not been used in American lighthouses up to that point,
31:03but I wouldn't say it was a new invention necessarily.
31:05Was this about spotting an opportunity then for Winslow Lewis?
31:09I think you could say that, yes.
31:11So he saw an opportunity to make improvements,
31:14but also he saw that no one else was doing that in the U.S. at the time.
31:18What was his plan?
31:20So once he had his patent in 1810,
31:22he was able to do several demonstrations of his lights.
31:26He set up temporary lights at Boston Light.
31:28Do we know the results of the tests that he undertook?
31:30Sure. So there was an 1811 report from members of the Boston Marine Society
31:34who went out to sea and viewed the light from Boston Light
31:39and that they reported that it could be seen from 11 leagues out to sea,
31:43which was theoretically twice as far as it could be seen in the past.
31:46Oh, wow.
31:48Just one month after Winslow Lewis installed his lamps permanently in Boston,
31:53he wrote to the Treasury of the United States, singing his own praises.
31:58So what's he saying here?
31:59So he's writing a letter to the Treasury Secretary.
32:02He's saying that he's installed his lights at Boston Light.
32:06And he says,
32:07the results, I flatter myself, have exceeded the public's most sanguine expectations.
32:12Right.
32:13So he's not beating around the bush.
32:14No.
32:14He's quite happy with himself.
32:15Lewis's letter clearly impressed the Secretary of the Treasury,
32:18as he immediately secured a commission to fit his lamp in every lighthouse in North America.
32:24And at that time, we're talking roughly how many lights?
32:28Somewhere in the range of 40 to 50 lighthouses at that time.
32:30And that's all up and down the East Coast?
32:32Up and down the East Coast, correct.
32:33Winslow Lewis is rubbing his hands together thinking,
32:36whew, this has come off.
32:37Exactly.
32:38How much money was he set to be bringing in?
32:41So he sold the rights to his patent
32:44and also contracted to install those lamps and all those lighthouses for $24,000 in 1812.
32:50That's equivalent to half a million dollars today.
32:54But Lewis's money-making schemes didn't end there.
32:57In 1816, he gets a contract to deliver oil to all of those lighthouses.
33:02So now he's the only person both installing the lamps
33:05and he's also responsible for delivery of the whale oil to light those lamps as well.
33:09Very shrewd businessman.
33:10He was very good at networking, I would say.
33:17The rapid expansion of the US lighthouse network,
33:21spearheaded by Winslow Lewis in the 19th century,
33:25led to a demand for lighthouse keepers.
33:29An unexpected army of unsung heroes stepped up to take their place.
33:37We know that there were at least 200 official keepers who were women.
33:42But of course that number is quite small compared to how many women
33:46kept a lighthouse for a week, a month, a year,
33:50or even an extended period of time unofficially with a husband or a father
33:55or a male relative as the official keeper.
33:58It was often tragedy that would open the door for America's female keepers.
34:03They were taking over when a husband or father died.
34:07Often the people in the town would say, you know,
34:11this widow has six children and we're not going to put her out of this lighthouse
34:16or this woman is really capable, she's been doing the job with her husband.
34:19She should, of course, be the one to keep the lighthouse.
34:22Sometimes the mariners themselves would say, this is a great light,
34:25so this woman should stay as the keeper.
34:27The female keepers were often paid the same wage as the men
34:31and the role became one of the first non-clerical government jobs open to them.
34:36And the keeper at Lime Rock Light in Newport, 74 miles south of Boston,
34:41became perhaps the most famous lighthouse keeper in US history.
34:47So Ida Lewis was born into a family where her father was a keeper.
34:54He was actually a captain before that.
34:55That happened a lot. When they got to a certain age,
34:58they might be appointed as a keeper.
35:00But he was never really of sound health.
35:02And so she began with her mother keeping the light.
35:06And so that's when she was 15.
35:07She would also row her siblings to school in a rowboat.
35:11So she got very skilled with a boat.
35:15Even early on in her teens,
35:17she was able to perform several rescues
35:20near and off the coast of the lighthouse in her little rowboat.
35:25Ida performed her first rescue at the age of 12,
35:28assisting four men whose boat had capsized.
35:31Although not in the job description,
35:33she'd end up saving everyone from soldiers to sheep over her long career.
35:39She kept the light for, I believe, 54 years total,
35:44into old age, of course.
35:45She became very famous.
35:48She was on the cover of Harper's Weekly.
35:51She received all kinds of attention and visitors.
35:56Newport, the community, had awarded her a beautiful brand-new rowboat, right?
36:01Like, gilded. It had upholstered seats, right?
36:04It was lovely.
36:05But, of course, she never used it, because why use that rowboat
36:09when she was rescuing people in her very serviceable old rowboat
36:13this whole time?
36:15Over a century after Ida Lewis was lightkeeping in Newport,
36:20Boston Light has its very first female keeper.
36:23And she's the last keeper left in the entire United States.
36:40Boston Light has been at the cutting edge of lighthouses for over 300 years,
36:45from setting up as America's first light in 1716
36:49to spearheading new technology.
36:51The light may have changed,
36:53but the lighthouse keeper's role has always been a family affair.
36:58Most of its history, this was a family light station.
37:02You had a principal keeper and two assistants
37:04and their families living in these two houses.
37:07So, at certain times, there must have been a fairly well-populated island.
37:10Well, at least with a high population density, shall we say?
37:13Yeah, yeah.
37:14At times in the 1930s and 40s, you had as many, definitely as many as 16,
37:19but I've seen references possibly to as many as 19 kids living on this island at one time.
37:24And I was lucky enough to talk to, to interview some of those kids, grown kids, by the time I
37:30talked to them.
37:30Do they have favourable memories of their time?
37:33They did, they did.
37:34Almost entirely favourable.
37:36I interviewed Maurice Babcock Jr., whose father, Maurice Babcock, was the principal keeper here from 1926 to 41.
37:44And Maurice Jr. told me that they loved to play baseball here, but the island was too small,
37:50so they would go to Great Brewster, the island next door here, which they called Big Brewster.
37:54Yeah.
37:54And they would play baseball there, but if the ball went in the water, you were out, and the games
38:00were quite short.
38:02But they made the most of it. You know, you made your own fun at these places.
38:05Maurice Babcock Jr., when I, when I talked to him, told me that it was somewhat territorial,
38:10so when he was here, another family on the island was the Norwood family.
38:14So he lived in this house where we're sitting here. The Norwoods were in that big duplex house a little
38:20bit away from here.
38:21And he said it was somewhat territorial, you needed to ask permission before going on another family's part of the
38:25island.
38:26One time he went on the Norwoods part of the island without asking permission,
38:29and one of the Norwood girls socked him in the nose.
38:32So he learned, he learned to ask permission after that.
38:37There must have been times where great storms have come through, and, and for want of a better word,
38:44attacked this island and its residents.
38:47One of those great storms was the hurricane of 1938,
38:50the worst hurricane in recorded New England history.
38:57Wrecked fishing craft and pleasure boats numbered in the thousands.
39:00Not one port along the Atlantic coast escaped the wrath of the hurricane.
39:04Against nature's fury, man had no defense.
39:06He could only flee to safety, leaving possessions behind.
39:10More than 700 people died in that storm.
39:14Maurice Babcock was the principal keeper at the time.
39:18He went to the lighthouse to make sure the light stayed lit for the night through the storm.
39:24The door of the lighthouse at the bottom of the tower came off its hinges.
39:28I'm not sure if the door literally blew away, but the door was off its hinges.
39:31It couldn't be closed.
39:33So he and an assistant went to the top of the tower.
39:37And because the wind blowing up in the tower was so strong,
39:40it kept blowing the trap door at the top of the tower open,
39:44and there was no latch or anything, no way to keep it closed except sitting on it.
39:48So the two of them spent the night in the lantern room of the lighthouse,
39:52sitting on that trap door and make, and monitoring the light,
39:55making sure it stayed lit through the storm.
39:57When did family life cease on the island here?
40:02Well, from about 1940 to 1960, the old duplex house that was here was in rough shape.
40:09I understand ceilings were falling in, there were rats in the house and different problems.
40:14So the Coast Guard decided to make this a males-only or stag station at that time,
40:20and to demolish that old duplex house.
40:23So that was the end of that house, and it was the end of families living out here with the
40:27keepers.
40:29Boston Light was automated in 1998, but in recognition of its historic status,
40:36it still permitted a keeper, the only lighthouse in the USA to have one.
40:42Since 2003, Boston Light has been under the watchful eye of keeper Sally Snowman.
40:47As a civilian, she can't wear the Coast Guard uniform,
40:50so has turned to the 18th century for inspiration.
40:56Now, Sally, I have to say, as soon as I saw you,
40:58when I came onto the island, I did feel a bit underdressed.
41:01Can you tell me about what you were wearing?
41:04This would date to 1783, when the lighthouse tower was rebuilt.
41:09Well, seeing as the light's automated now, would that make you the last keeper here of the Boston Light?
41:16Yes. It is the last Coast Guard keeper's position, and I hold it.
41:23And the idea is that I will be the last one.
41:27And what's interesting is that I'm the first female.
41:30I'm the 70th keeper, and the first 69 were all men.
41:34And what are your roles and responsibilities?
41:37I jokingly say, being a lighthouse keeper, I'm doing light housekeeping.
41:43Clean, clean, clean.
41:45We dust off the lens, we wipe down the deck of the lantern room,
41:51and the gear room, and the 76 spiral stairs.
41:54Can we venture in a little bit further?
41:56Because behind you there, I can see we've got stairs,
41:58and for me, that looks like there's only one way that they're going.
42:01All right.
42:04In 1859, a lantern with a 12-sided Fresnel lens weighing 5 tonnes
42:09was shipped from France and installed in the tower.
42:12It's still in operation today.
42:20I'm distracted by this mechanism here inside.
42:24Here, let's shut that.
42:26I don't want you to fall, don't fall.
42:27No, good idea, thank you, because it's a long way down.
42:31It takes two minutes for the lens to do 360 degrees.
42:37One full rotation.
42:40Is there any chance we can do the final climb up to the top?
42:44Absolutely, yes.
42:45Yes.
42:48Come on up and see this beautiful crystal, nose to nose.
42:56Oh, this is great.
42:59Tell me about the lens.
43:01It has been functioning, rotating now, for that 163 years.
43:06It's the same lens. It's been up here for the whole time.
43:08It's the same lens. All the prisms are the original.
43:11And see these bullseyes?
43:13Yes.
43:13They take that 1,000 watt we have magnifier to 2 million candle power.
43:182 million candle power.
43:23Do you know how far the light can be seen with a friend out there?
43:2727 miles on a clear night.
43:30We can see it further.
43:31What's preventing it is the curvature of the Earth.
43:34Yeah.
43:36What's going on?
43:39For over 300 years, sailors have relied on a lighthouse here on Little Brewster Island,
43:45to guide them safely through the channels at the mouth of Boston Harbor.
43:50And the fact that a lighthouse still exists here today is astonishing.
43:59War, tragedy, and some of the worst weather imaginable have conspired against this structure and its predecessor.
44:07But despite everything, Boston Light remains an indispensable beacon today.
44:28Drunk and dangerous drivers are causing chaos on the roads.
44:32Join the traffic cops in action, back with a new series next Friday at 8.
44:37And tonight, saddle up for a honky-tonk trip in the home of country music.
44:41I'm Joe McDonald's in Nashville. Brand new next.
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