Lighthouses and Keepers : The U.S. Lighthouse Service and its Legacy

former US Coast Guard *Contains photographs, maps, line drawings, Notes and an explanatory Glossary *Recounts tales of shipwrecks and rescues From the East Coast to the West Coast, the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and Hawaiian islands, Lighthouses and Keepers explores the fascination of lighthouses in the United States. Among the most readily recognised buildings of the maritime world, these lonely sentinels by the sea have long been the subject of paintings and photographs. Today they continue to capture public imagination as visitors flock to their sites and help preserve them against the ravages of time and tide. Lighthouses and Keepers covers not only lighthouses and lightships, but buoys, buoy tenders, fog signals, and their keepers. The work is as rich in historical document as it is rarely seen photographs, and fourteen maps guide readers to the lighthouses'precise locations. Readers are also treated to stories of shipwrecks and rescues, including the extraordinary story of Ida Lewis, head keeper of the light at Lime Rock, Rhode Island, who saved the lives of eighteen people in a dramatic maritime rescue.