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There have been many reports written about the disaster that occurred at Egg Island Lighthouse station in British Columbia on November 2, 1948, but none of them tell the true story. The Government of Canada did much to stop the truth from being heard. Now that both my mother and father are dead, and most of the other players in the story are long since past, I feel reasonably safe in documenting the story.
My parents (Robert Laurence “Bob” Wilkins and Ada Marie Wilkins) had been keepers for some years at Green Island Lighthouse Station, and had transferred to Egg Island in 1948 when a vacancy came up. Egg Island, being more remote, paid a better salary. I was nine years old when we went to Egg Island.
The main island was humped up in the center and covered with an old growth forest of hemlock, spruce, and fir. At the back (east end) there was a small harbor with a boathouse and a 16-foot lifeboat.
Stairs ran from the boathouse up to the back of the island, and a trail ran through the woods to a large clearing at the west end. The clearing had been used long past to raise chickens. The coop and a small brooding coop still existed. From the clearing a wooden foot bridge spanned the 100-foot ravine to the smaller rock island with the lighthouse and auxiliary buildings.
The lighthouse itself sat about 100 feet south of the foot bridge. It was a wooden building, built originally about 1896, down closer to the water. At the back of the building was a large porch-like area built on pilings. This was used for laundry and my schooling. My parents’ bedroom was on the main floor, and my bedroom was at the top of the stairs in the northeast corner.
In another upstairs bedroom I found an old log. One entry from about 1912 told of a severe storm that flooded the first floor and caused considerable damage to the outside of the building. To avoid this from happening again, a new foundation was built further up on the island, closer to the fog alarm building, and the building was moved onto the new foundation. This was the situation we had inherited.
The fog alarm building was still in its original location, equipped with two Fairbanks Morse diesel single cylinder engines. Watching them run was impressive for a nine year old boy. My job when there was fog was to climb the stairs past the BRRRRUUUURRR of the horn, into the attic, along 2x12 planks to fill the maze of oil cups that lubricated the two engines. Those engines drank the oil like a two year-old with Kool-Aid in the summer.
It wasn’t all work, and in the summer of 1948 I discovered an old shed in the ravine that had been destroyed by some storm. With a little work, a few of my dad’s nails and an old hammer and saw, I had enough material to build myself a shack in the clearing of the main island, complete with a bunk, a lantern and some old blankets.
Next I found there were wild rabbits on the island, and with the help of my dad I built traps to catch some of the rabbits. I used the old chicken coop and run for my rabbit pen, and finally I was feeling at home.
The summer passed and my parents started to work on getting the lighthouse to look like a home. The weather was typical for early November — a moderate sea, rain, wind. It was election time in the USA, and this was something to occupy the minds of my parents. The election results were stunning — Truman was beating Dewey. It was so engrossing that my Dad forgot to make the nightly report by radio to Bull Harbour. But this wasn’t a big deal; the radio seldom worked anyway, so that is how it would be logged. And I went to bed.
About 2 a.m. my Mom woke me and told be to get dressed NOW! and get downstairs. I am not sure why I responded so quickly, whether I thought it was morning or if I understood the fear in her voice. In any case I did as I was told. I soon found out why.
A sea had broke my parents’ bedroom window and washed both of them, and their bedding and mattress, onto a soggy sea-soaked floor. There was no need to analyze the situation. They knew there was serious trouble, so my Mom threw on a coat and came for me while my Dad surveyed the damage.
A sunroom was located off their bedroom, so he went to go out there to get a better look. It was gone. It was a shear drop 20 feet to the rocks below, and he could see the seas had been sweeping the island.
We gathered in the kitchen, and got ready to go out through the laundry room to the walkway behind the lighthouse. It was also gone. The laundry room did not exist, and there was a shear drop down to the ravine below.
My dad said not to worry, we would go out the kitchen window and over to the fog alarm building. The kitchen window wouldn’t budge — it had long since been painted shut. No problem, my Dad pulled the table back from the window, picked up one of the wooden kitchen chairs and gave the window a powerful whack.
The chair broke into a dozen pieces, and my Mom screamed bloody murder! “You’re breaking my chairs!” she cried. “I’ll buy you new ones,” my Dad replied in frustration as he finally smashed out the window with the second chair, which didn’t survive the ordeal either.
My Dad jumped out of the window to the ground below, and my Mom passed me out the window into his arms. Everything had changed. The grass, flowers, even the earth was gone, down to barren rock. The various sheds for paint and fuel were gone. The small engine for the hoist was gone. And the sea was a continuous roar, like a raging waterfall.
My Dad, worried about when the next sea would strike, rushed me over to the fog alarm building. My Mom, expecting to be helped out of the window next, screamed with fear that she had been forgotten. I was given orders to stay put, and he rushed back for my Mom. He gathered her up, with our dog Boots tucked safely under her arm, and made the dash back to where I was waiting. Our cat Smoky remained sleeping on a chair. Once together we headed into the building only to find that the seas had filled the room up over the height of the engines. Clearly this was not a refuge.
The next plan was to go over to the main island, which was higher and therefore now the safest place. But when we approached the bridge we found it damaged. For the first 50 feet many of the planks were missing. With dark, wet nails and pieces of broken planks sticking up here and there, and the sound of raging waters below, the bridge seemed nearly impossible to cross. It was equally impossible to remain where we were.
We made the crossing, and my parents decided the boathouse at the back of the island might be a safe refuge. But once again the seas had been there. The boat had been washed off its trolley and sat on its side against the boathouse wall. We went back up the stairs for a cold vigil in the main island forest.
Until then there had only been a heavy sea, no wind, no rain. But that changed with a vengeance. The wind raged and we could hear trees snapping and falling in the distance. The hail started with stone-like marbles which stung like bees through my clothes. It was worse for my parents; they only had their night clothes with a coat.
With the change, my Dad thought it was time to see what was happening back at the lighthouse. So we made our way back to the clearing. My Mom and I waited while my Dad went to bridge to look over to the small island. In a second he was back, a frantic look on his face, and he said “RUN!”
Later I found out that he had gone to the bridge and saw the light turning like normal. Then it moved. It tilted and moved closer as the entire lighthouse rode up on a wave towards the bridge. In a deafening roar it crashed down on the bridge and into the ravine.
We spent the rest of the night at the high point of the main island in the wind and rain, afraid that the seas might increase again and wash the entire island clean.
My Mom refused to believe what had happened until she could see it with her own eyes in the morning, and even then the seas continued to sweep the smaller island. The bridge had half collapsed.
With the few items in my shack, we moved into the chicken coop, the largest of the buildings in the clearing. We sat cold, hungry and scared for two days and nights. By then the seas had subsided and my Dad made his way back to the smaller island. He crossed the remaining half of the bridge, down the collapsed half into the ravine (at low tide) and crawled up the bank. On one of his attempts up the bank he slipped and fell onto the rocks, smashing the bones in both elbows. Although he managed to get up the bank, that injury would disable him for life.
One of the major items Dad brought back from the fog alarm building was a 45-gallon drum modified to be a wood burning stove. It gave us warmth and later the ability to cook food. It made life in the coop more bearable.
Later that day, my parents decided that one of the rabbits would have to be sacrificed for food. While that was cooking, water was taken from a small stream that ran through the clearing. Things might have looked up, but it wasn’t that easy.
The water was contaminated with the salt-laden spray that hung in the air, and either the thought of eating my pet rabbit or the water or both made me violently ill. I lay in a miserable state all that day.
The next day my Dad went down to the ravine to see if anything could be salvaged from the wreckage. He found a tin of consommé soup, a tin of Prem, and an egg (unbroken, without a single crack). It was the first real food in five days, and it was all that he could find.
Although in pain from his elbows, Dad decide that he would try to row eastward to Bella Bella or possibly meet some ship at sea. We wrestled the boat back onto its trolley, launched it and he rowed off into the heavy seas. But it was no good; even with good arms he couldn’t have made any distance in the seas. He gave up and turned back.
He then tried to signal a passing ship with the last of the compressed air in the fog alarm station tanks. But the seas were still heavy and passing ships cleared the island at a great distance. Things did not look good.
On the sixth day, Dad noticed a fishing boat circling the island. We rushed down to the boathouse, launched the boat with all of us on board and rowed out to try and catch it. The crew of the fishing boat, the Sunny Boy, was more than surprised to see us rowing out to meet them. They had come by to see if there was anything worth picking up on the island. They had heard that the light was gone, and “all hands lost.”
We were all given clean clothes, a warm bunk and lots of food by the friendliest bunch of guys I had ever seen. The food smelled great — bacon, fried eggs, hash browns and toast, but after a bite or two none of us could eat any more. It was as if our stomachs had shrunk.
The Sunny Boy headed for the nearest port for help, the hospital at Bella Bella. I was in good shape other than being dehydrated. My Dad had bone fragments in both elbows, which prevented him from fully straightening his arms, a condition he would live with for the rest of his life. My Mom had recently recovered from a mild bout of TB, and was suffering from the stress of the experience. She would have a “nervous breakdown,” and never fully recovered her health.
The people of Bella Bella treated us royally until the lighthouse tender Alberni arrived. She had been sent down from Prince Rupert when word that the station had washed away. Steaming at her 10 knots for eight hours a day, she had just reached Bella Bella nearly nine days later. Apparently there was no need to rush if we were all dead.
A few days later we arrived back in Prince Rupert, the press happy to see us, the government a little embarrassed that we were alive. But we were a family that just had the clothes on our backs. No home, no possessions, no job, no income.
The community helped at first. The government offered my dad a job shoveling coal — with two smashed elbows. They then offered him a job as a relief keeper back at Green Island. My Mom said “NO WAY!” Dad went, but even he couldn’t stand it any more. Finally, they offered him a job on the construction crew rebuilding Egg Island.
It was there that he discovered why the lighthouse had washed away and the fog alarm building had remained.
Back when the lighthouse was moved, it was lifted and placed on its new foundation much like you would move a house today. The building was just placed on the foundation, without any attempt to fasten it in place - not even a single nail.
As the seas swept the island, the building had simply floated off its foundation like the boat had floated off its trolley. The fog alarm building remained fixed to its original foundation and survived the storm with minor damage.
My parents were trying to reach a settlement with the government, but it was no match. Dad had been warned earlier when offered a radio interview with the CBC, “Don’t discuss Egg Island.”
Finally, the government offered them $5,000 for all back pay, possession, and damages. That finished the relationship with the government and my family.
Almost, that is. Revenue Canada demanded income tax for 1948, and my Dad had had enough. He wrote back that they had lost everything and were even. They disagreed. He wrote his former bosses in the Department of Transport, and Revenue Canada backed off.
It was nearly six years later when Dad decided he should write this story for Reader’s Digest. Weeks later, there was a knock at my parents’ door and two large plain clothes men advised my parents strongly that it would not be wise for them to do anything like that again. Dad destroyed the article and only told the story to his friends, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Now, over fifty years after it happened, it is time for the true story to be told.
This story appeared in the
December 2001 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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