HOPETOWN

We found a dock for $100 a week right under this historic lighthouse....no electric or water...but hey, it's a new dock and better than a mooring or anchoring.

Who could hate a lighthouse? Years ago Bahamians, especially Abaconians, felt a strong and guiltless enmity towards lighthouses.... animosity began in 1836 when the first two major lighthouses were built in the Bahamas, one on the southern tip of Great Abaco Island at Hole-in-the-Wall and the other at Gun Cay just south of Bimini. Concerned shipping interests had implored England to improve navigation aids in her colonies because of the increasing number of ships that were leaving their bones there.

"However, because many Abaconians made a good living from salvaging (then know as 'wracking') the unfortunate ships that ended their sailing days on the dangerous shoals of this low archipelago of reefs, rocks, cays and white beaches, navigation aids were no friends of the 'wrackers.'

"Merchant sail flourished between 1820 and 1880 and the Bahama Islands lay spread-out along its way. The Bahamian wracking fleet stood ready to help, with almost 300 vessels licensed to cruise the reefs in search of luckless ships to salvage, employing half of the able-bodied men in the country and accounting for about half of this British colony's revenue. The records for 1860 show an amazing average of one wreck per month at Abaco alone.

"Wracking was a lucrative business. The system required that the salvaged cargo, considered to be imported goods, be shipped to Nassau for auction with the government taking 15%, the agents 15% and 40 to 60% going back to the wrackers. The ship owners received the 10 - 30% that was left, which doesn't' seem like much, but had it not been for the wrackers and the system they would have received nothing.

"In order to build the Elbow Reef Lightstation, the Imperial Lighthouse Service, Trinity House, London, brought in some outside help but also employed many Hope Towners to unload supplies, quarry the limestone rock for building foundations and cisterns, to mix the cement and carry out the myriads of other chores can are a part of a construction job of such magnitude. The locals were glad for the jobs but at the same time they wished that they were not building a lighthouse. There were reports by the supervisors that some locals sank a supply barge one night and also withheld fresh water from the workers.

"Despite the wrecking community's protests, the light station was completed in 1864: a fixed (non-rotating), first-order (of brightness) light, warning ships away from the treacherous reef extending a considerable distance to seaward of Elbow Cay

"Lighthouses ­ ever silent sentinels and angels to the sailor ­ along with the advent of steam replacing sail and more accurate nautical charts, combined to finally put the wracking industry on the rocks.

"Another economic bubble had burst for the people of Hope Town.

"In 1936 the Imperial Lighthouse Service realized that the light at Gun Cay was being 'used less and less . . . and so it was closed. At the same time the Service realized Elbow Reef's need for a beacon which could be more easily identified by ships at sea. The Gun Cay Lighthouse was decapitated. The iron lantern room with its dome, the petroleum burner equipment, the turning mechanism and the rotating Fresnel lenticualr panels with five bull's-eyes which had been going around at Gun Cay since 1929 (and may have been elsewhere before that) were brought to Hope Town to replace the 1864 standing wick-type light.

"The 'new' light source for Elbow Cay was built by Chance Brothers of Birmingham, England and is till sending out the light today from the top of the Elbow Reef Lighthouse. The hood petroleum burner is rated at 325,000 candlepower, a first order light. A hand pump is used to pressurize the kerosene in heavy iron containers in the service room, directly below the lantern room and travels up a tube to an atomizer which sprays into a mantle (a hood of network fabric) having been pre-heated before lighting. Some camping lanterns operate similarly.

"The beautiful Fresnel lenses concentrate the mantle's light into a piercing beam straight out towards the horizon. The eight thousand pound lenses and burner equipment float in a circular tub of lubricant thereby reducing friction so that seven hundred pounds of weight, when wound up to the top of the tower by a hand winch and using a series of bronze gears, rotate the four ton apparatus once around every 15 seconds and very smoothly at that. The keeper on duty has to wind up the weights every two hours. The smooth sweep of the turning lenses with their five swords of light cutting the darkness over the sea, while the light constantly glows between those beams, is know as the 'soul' of a lighthouse. Once seen and compared to an electric flashing light, it is not soon forgotten and the use of the word 'soul' is more easily understood.