Digest>Archives> Mar/Apr 2014

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Lightship Destroyed for Entertainment

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Although lightship duty was considered the most dangerous duty of the old U.S. Lighthouse Service and the early U.S. Coast Guard, lightships, for some reason, have never drawn the amount of interest from the public and historians as have lighthouses. But, in fact, lightships were floating lighthouses. They were assigned to an area where it was either impossible or too expensive to build a lighthouse. Sadly, very few of our lightships remain and some met strange endings.

This image of the Hen and Chickens Lightship LV-42, from a photo taken on Monday, April 26, 1926, is one of the better close-up views of a lightship on its station. Located in the waters off Massachusetts about 4 miles from Cuttyhunk Lighthouse, it is shown here getting a fresh supply of water from a hose that was coming from a lighthouse tender that is not shown in the photo. At this time there might have also been a change of crew as well as the delivery of supplies taking place.

Newspapers and magazines being delivered to the crew of the lightship on that day probably told about the failed assassination attempt against Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, the first launch of a liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts, and the first check sent by radio facsimile transmission across the Atlantic Ocean.

Built in Brooklyn, New York in 1877, the Lightship LV 42 was retired from duty in 1931. As part of a July 4th celebration in 1940, as fireworks exploded overhead, the vessel was set on fire off Apple Island in Boston Harbor. The crowd cheered and watched in awe as the vessel burned and its debris sank or floated away. Shortly thereafter, perhaps as karma, Apple Island itself disappeared when the area was filled in to make room for an expansion of the Boston Airport, which became the General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport.

This story appeared in the Mar/Apr 2014 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.

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