Digest>Archives> Mar/Apr 2011

Kate Would Be Proud

Robbins Reef To Be Saved

By Timothy Harrison

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As gravely ill Robbins Reef Lighthouse keeper John Walker, who had been the keeper of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse since 1885, was gently bundled up and put into a small boat in 1890 to be rowed to the Smith Infirmary in Tompkinsville, Staten Island, New York, he looked up from the boat at his wife and said, “Mind the light, Katie.” Those were the last words John Walker said to his wife, and for the next 29 years she honored those words until she retired in 1919 from lighthouse keeping.

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Robbins Reef Lighthouse as it appeared in 1917 ...

Although there were many other keepers of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse, a caisson structure located in the waters off Staten Island, New York, it was Catherine “Kate” Walker’s extraordinary career that made this structure probably the most notable of all spark plug style lighthouses in the United States.

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One of the members of The Nobel Maritime ...

And now, thanks to The Noble Maritime Collection, the new owners of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse, the life and times of Catherine “Kate” Walker and others who served at the lighthouse will be saved for future generations as part of the long range plans to fully restore the lighthouse. However, the history of Robbins Reef Lighthouse is more associated with Kate Walker than any other person.

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The painting of Robbins Reef Lighthouse done by ...

Kate Gortler, a widow with a young son, had immigrated to the United States from Germany and taken a job at the Sandy Hook boarding house and commissary where she met John Walker. He offered to teach her English and they soon fell in love and married. When Kate and her husband John were married in 1868, John had already been the assistant keeper at Sandy Hook Lighthouse in New Jersey, a land-based lighthouse.

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This artwork of Kate Walker cleaning the lights, ...

When the couple first arrived at Robbins Reef Lighthouse, Kate was not sure if she would agree to stay at the lighthouse. Although she liked the sea, living out in a structure surrounded by water looked rather daunting to her. In fact, for a while she kept her trunks packed until life at the lighthouse settled in. She hung a pendulum clock and pictures of sailing boats. She arranged green flowering plants in the windows and placed a wooden rocking chair by the pot-bellied stove. She reportedly always kept fresh flowers on the kitchen table.

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Kate Walker wearing a long dress ascends the ...

Realizing that, while a life may go out, the light must not go out, Kate, now a widow for the second time, made the decision to stay at the lighthouse after her husband’s death. However, securing the job did not come easily. Apparently, lighthouse officials felt that a petite 4-foot-10-inch tall woman was not capable of tending a lighthouse surrounded by water, or of fulfilling the duties required at such a lighthouse. While the government tried unsuccessfully to find a man willing to be keeper of the light, Kate remained on the job but she was only paid a laborer’s salary. Finally, on June 28, 1894, Kate was appointed Acting Keeper and in July 7, 1895 the appointment was made permanent. Her son Jacob was appointed as her assistant keeper. In most historical accounts, Kate’s son Jacob is referred to as Jake; however, sometimes the name Jack is used.

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In all the years that Kate tended this lighthouse surrounded by water, she rarely left the lighthouse. Her ventures away from the light were rare, and if so, she was generally only gone long enough to row to Staten Island for the children’s school trips or for supplies. After her husband died, she never went to visit his grave; she didn’t have the luxury of being away from the light that long. However, in the records of the Robbins Reef Yacht Club, she is quoted as saying, “Every morning when the sun comes up I stand at the porthole and look towards his grave. Sometimes the hills are brown. Sometimes they are green; sometimes they are white with snow. But they always bring a message from him, something I heard him say oftener than anything else. Just three words: “Mind the light.”

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This undated photograph shows Robbins Reef ...

Kate spent nearly every Christmas alone at the lighthouse. She would send the children on their way to be with friends and family on shore, saying that they were only young once and they needed to have some fun. She stayed and kept the light burning.

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This rare photograph of the interior of Robbins ...

It was on one of those Christmas days when a violent storm came in and the chain holding the station’s boat came loose. Since the boat was her only lifeline to the world, she had to fix it. She recounted that day in an interview after she had retired from the lighthouse. “I opened the door of the porch, but the wind flung me back and slammed the door. I tried again and again, but it hurled me back and slammed the door. The third time, I fell, and crawled along the stone pier to the side where the boat was hung. Every moment I felt I would be swept to sea by the waves. The wind nearly whirled me off the landing into the sea, and I had to fight for breath. The sleet froze on me. Finally I managed to tie the boat fast so that it could not move.”

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Depiction of the first Robbins Reef Lighthouse by ...

Kate had few callers at the lighthouse. Most people were afraid of her front steps. One relative from Brooklyn who did visit became paralyzed with fright about halfway up the iron ladder on the outside of the lighthouse leading up from the water.

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Looking down the stairway from the lantern room ...

It was stories like those written by Henry Allston that appeared with some interesting artwork in the December 21, 1902 edition of the Denver Republican newspaper, which was published in Colorado from 1887 to 1913, over 1600 miles away from the lighthouse that helped gain Kate Walker’s notoriety. Allston, who titled his story, “This Lonely Home,” referred to Kate in his story as Katy. Other stories over the years have also referred to her at Katie. Allston wrote that Katy’s lighthouse has the reputation of being the best kept lighthouse in the Third Lighthouse District. Katy told him, “I like to work. It keeps me contented and happy.” Allston reported that “Mrs. Walker had never had a complaint filed against her and had never been reprimanded by her superiors in spite of the fact that she had charge of a lighthouse which stands in one of the world’s busiest harbors.”

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Looking up at the ceiling of the watch room to ...

When her son Jake got married, he and his wife moved into the lighthouse with Kate. When children came along, they continued to live at the lighthouse. According to Kate Walker’s obituary in the New York Times, one of those children died at the lighthouse, but the story did not give any details.

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Eventually, as Kate’s daughter Mamie (Mary) grew, she went away to a boarding school, but returned to the light as often as she could. In his story, Allston wrote that on Mary’s returns to the lighthouse she would spend hours with her young nieces on sunny days on the rope swing at the lighthouse, on which she herself had spent many childhood days. He described the swing as being suspended from stout iron hooks driven into the floor of the second balcony. Allston continued, “She (Mary) has never known any other home than this lighthouse and her affection for it is deep. She is, indeed, a child of the sea, and like her simple-minded, open-hearted and quaintly old-fashioned mother, she can interpret its every sign and mood.”

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Special cached commemorative envelope and post ...

When Jake’s children were old enough to go to school, he and his wife moved to shore and Jake split his time between lighthouse and being on shore with his wife. But for most of the time, Kate was by herself.

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The USCGC Katherine Walker, “The Keeper of New ...

In 1904, William Hemmingway, who, along with a few others, received special permission from Lighthouse Inspector Chauncey Thomas to visit Kate at Robbins Reef Lighthouse, and he wrote about his visit. When Hemmingway asked Kate how she liked living at the lighthouse, he recalled that her blue eyes twinkled and, with a smile on her face, she replied, “I couldn’t like it being anywhere else. I’m used to it. It’s home.”

In describing the interior of the tower, Hemingway wrote. “Down in the cellar, well aired and flooded with sunlight, were cases of illuminating oil and the engine for driving compressed air through the siren, whose long, reverberant muzzle is thrust seaward over the south side of the platform.

“On the first floor were the kitchen and dining room, all bright and shining, with an amount of space surprisingly large in a house that looks so small and cage-like from afar. On the three floors above the parlor are the bedrooms, all of exquisite neatness and so cozy that one could readily understand why the homemaker is so fond of staying at home. And the daintiness of the house cannot be imagined by mere landsmen. It is the daintiness of the dustless sea, every rug and bit of carpet in the full glory of its proper color, all the paint fresh and bright, every bit of glass so clear and polished to such brilliance that it is difficult to tell at first glance whether a window is open or shut.”

Hemingway said that when the men arrived in the lantern room they had to step back in amazement at the lighthouse lenses which shined in a way that could not be described, but “were as fascinating to the eye as any jewel ever polished by man.”

As Kate got older, it was often her son Jake who would launch the lighthouse boat to rescue mariners in distress, and a large number of rescues were reportedly credited to him, some at great peril to his own life.

However, during her career, Kate was credited with saving over 50 lives by herself, some say more. In an interview after her retirement, she recounted a frigid winter rescue she made of five men from a wrecked three-mast schooner. As the last man was pulled into her boat, he hollered, “Where’s Scotty?” Kate then heard the whine of a dog and caught the shaggy brown creature with her oars as the dog drifted by, struggling in the currents of the icy cold water. She hauled the dog into the boat. Kate said, “He crouched, shivering at my ankles. I’ll never forget the look in his big brown eyes as he raised them to mine.” Rowing into the strong cold wind, it took two hours for Kate to reach the lighthouse. After securing the boat, she picked up the dog, tucked it under her coat and struggled up the ladder of the lighthouse. In the kitchen of the lighthouse, she took Scotty from under her coat, and the poor little creature, suffering from hypothermia, fell over “like a frozen corpse,” she said. In inclement weather, Kate said she always kept a hot pot of coffee on the stove, and this night had been no exception. She quickly poured some coffee into a cup and slowly nursed some down the dog’s throat. Kate recalled, “The dog gasped and shivered. Then his eyes opened and there was that same thankful look he had given me in the boat.”

In talking about her love for the sea and the lighthouse, she once told a New York Times reporter, “I never leave the light except when the day is fair and there is not the least sign of rain. I have only known fear on land. I am afraid of streetcars and automobiles.” Twice a year she said she had to go to New York on business and was in fear from the time she left the ferryboat.

In her mind she must have known that the day would come when she would have to leave the lighthouse for good. That day arrived in 1919 when, at the age of 73 she retired from lighthouse keeping at Robbins Reef Lighthouse and went to live in a home on Staten Island. However, various writers over the years reported that she did make some trips back to the lighthouse to visit with the new keeper. We can only wonder what the conversations centered around and the kind of memories she might have shared with the new keeper(s).

After Kate Walker left Robbins Reef Lighthouse, keepers came and went, but none of them gained the notoriety that Kate Walker achieved. In fact, when the Coast Guard took over America’s lighthouses from the Lighthouse Service in 1939, they assigned a three-man crew to Robbins Reef Lighthouse and it became a stag station. The three-man crew did the work of what one woman had once done by herself.

However, one other keeper who served at Robbins Reef Lighthouse did gain a moment of fame, although briefly. In December of 1953, the Coast Guard announced that its oldest active lighthouse keeper, Joaquin H. Brito, one of the three-man crew of keepers at Robbins Reef Lighthouse, would be a guest of honor at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the invention of the electric light to be held on January 15, 1954 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In his capacity as a Coast Guard lighthouse keeper, he and Mayor Joseph Altman would light two giant replicas of the Absecon Lighthouse, which had been erected at the entrance to the city as symbols of the Diamond Jubilee of Light.

In 1965, Coast Guard Engineman 2nd Wallace Berkley Howell, who was one of the last of the three-man keeper crews to serve at Robbins Reef Lighthouse, gave a tour of the lighthouse to New York Times reporter John P. Callahan. Howell told Callahan, “Usually, three men are on duty, standing daily watches of eight hours with 16 hours off. They serve for a few weeks or a month at a stretch and then get four or five days of shore leave.” Unlike in the days when Kate Walker lived there, the lighthouse now had an electric freezer, washing machine, and iron. Kate would probably have loved to have had an electric iron, which was quite different from the one she would have had that had to be heated up on the stove. In spite of the fact that there were no women now living at the lighthouse, Callahan described the sleeping quarters as “reminiscent of yesteryear with a nautical touch in the porthole windows, which are curtained as prettily as if a bride had hung them.”

In closing his article, Callahan wrote, “As the spring-like breezes sailed through the doorway, Howell stood at the top of the ladder looking down to the outboard motored rowboat bobbing in the shallow water of the breakwater.” There was no motor powered boat in the days of Kate Walker. “Here comes the cutter from the base,” Howell said. “It’s sort of good to see somebody coming out. But, sometimes it’s like leaving an awfully peaceful place. There ain’t many left.”

Howell was right, and soon thereafter there were no more lighthouses with keepers, including Robbins Reef. With the exception of an occasional visit by the Coast Guard for maintenance of the beacon, for the next 45 years Robbins Reef Lighthouse was closed up and void of human life. Without heat, fresh coats of interior paint, and general maintenance, the lighthouse soon began to decay; rust and peeling paint chips are everywhere. The porthole windows, once so shiny and clean with drapes around them, are dirty, and the interior of the entire station is in a dilapidated condition; although the lighthouse is structurally sound, it has a cold eerie empty feeling. If Kate Walker were alive today, she would be shocked to see the condition of the interior of the lighthouse that she once kept so immaculate.

Being the common sense woman that she was, she would probably have wondered why the Coast Guard simply didn’t turn the lighthouse over to someone who could have taken it over and maintained it while it was still in good condition. Why wait 45 years for the lighthouse to deteriorate and now have to spend a fortune to restore it?

However, Kate Walker would now be honored to know that the dedicated people of the Noble Maritime Collection, a museum and study center on Staten Island, now own the lighthouse and have a ten-year plan to restore it to its glory days when she so faithfully kept the light burning to protect the mariners at sea. She would be especially proud to know that part of the restoration plan calls for an exhibit honoring her life at the lighthouse.

This story appeared in the Mar/Apr 2011 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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