Digest>Archives> June 1999

The Internet: Strengthening the International Community of Lighthouse Lovers

By Jim Merkel

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"Where do you want to go today?" says the tagline for Microsoft. For many reading these words, the answer is: anywhere mariners have gone where the land meets the sea, and friends of sailors have kept the light burning. The places for such people on the internet offer testimony to the increasing popularity of lighthouses, and the role of the information superhighway in bringing about that expanded interest.

There are literally thousands of places for lovers of lighthouses to go on the internet. But a warning is necessary: without caution, those lovers may turn to their clock after "a few minutes" of searching and discover it's 3 in the morning.

A routine search for the word "lighthouses" on AOL NetFind recently turned up nearly 6,000 possible stops, ranging from sites assembled by lighthouse enthusiasts to merchants hawking lighthouse souvenirs. They also include sites for individual lighthouses, and the Lighthouse Digest site, which get more than a third of a million hits a month.

"I feel that the Web and the internet are the greatest information revolution since the invention of the Gutenberg printing press," said Jim Carigan, a Frankfort, Ky resident who knows both the internet and lighthouses. Director of information systems for Delta America Re Ins. Co. in Frankfort, and a longtime lighthouse devotee, he is the keeper of "The Lighthouse Hunter's Guide to the Interverse," at http://members.aol.com/uslhswww/lhindex.htm.

"Every interest, major or special, is experiencing an explosion of information and communication," Carigan said. But Carigan notes that specialty interests like lighthouses are gaining ground at a much faster rate than areas like major sports and celebrity gossip, which already had big audiences before the popular discovery of the internet.

"How would landlocked pharophiles, like myself, find lighthouse subject matter without the internet? I'll guarantee you there are no Lighthouse Digests or Keepers Logs at my local library," Carigan said. And, he adds, ""How would you have found me, tucked away in the hills of Kentucky, to include in your article, if not for the internet?"

Neil Hurley might ask a similar question about his Florida Lighthouse Page, (http://www.erols.com/lthouse/home.htm), where it's possible to learn the history and names of the keepers of the Charlotte Harbor Light, view a map showing locations of all the lighthouses in Florida or read an article about the Port Boca Grande Lighthouse Museum.

Visitors to Hurley's web site may not know it, but the webmaster is hundreds of miles away from Florida, where he formerly worked as a Marine Information Specialist, and received large numbers of questions on Florida lighthouses.

"Because of my career in the Coast Guard, I haven't lived in Florida for several years," said Hurley, a commander in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve who works at the Reserve Programs and Policy Branch at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "The web site has kept me "in the loop" for the latest happenings on Florida Lighthouses and has given me extraordinary opportunities to better establish myself as a Florida Lighthouse historian."

And so it is throughout the internet. The network connecting computers throughout the world has brought together people with similar interests, and in communities that have made them stronger than they ever would be on their own. And one of the best examples of that strength in numbers is the worldwide community of lighthouse enthusiasts.

In this community, one can sit at a computer and check the temperature and wind speeds at the Stannard Rock Light Station in Lake Superior and other offshore lighthouses where the National Data Buoy Center maintains monitoring equipment, by going to http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov. A person can find out more about Iceland's lighthouses by going to http://www.sigling.is/enska/lighthouses.html. It's even possible to get an update on the writing of a lighthouse novel - the author's - by tapping in http://members.aol.com/jmerkelstl/index.html.

One popular site getting about 800 hits a day is Lighthouses Around the World, at http://www.worldlights.com/world. It's kept by Nico Derks, a brewmaster in the Netherlands, whose interest in lighthouses started when he visited some islands, Of those visiting his site, 78% are from the United States.

"Bulletin boards and chatrooms are well used on my site," Derks said in an e-mail sent from the Netherlands, in response to a reporter's questions.

If it would be hard for lovers of lighthouses to locate Derks without the internet, it would be doubly difficult to locate Malcolm Macdonald of The Lighthouses of Australia Project. Macdonald said he started the site at http://www.lighthouse.net.au/lights/default.htm to promote and coordinate the presentation of Australian lighthouses on the internet.

"It began after I became a little riled when, while searching for an image to use as a logo for my business, I found that there were no Australian Lighthouses featured on the internet," Macdonald e-mailed from Australia. "The main emphasis was on U.S. Lighthouses with a smattering of (British) and European lighthouses."

Initially, Macdonald and a friend, Ed Kavaliunas, planned to take pictures of a few local lighthouses and post them. "But as I poked around the internet, looking for information, I started to discover that there were other people who had done some work already. It just wasn't being seen!"

From this came "The Lighthouses of Australia Project," which went beyond a local site, to an index of other Australian sites. Macdonald estimates the 96 pages indexed get about 9,000 hits a month, and e-mails about a variety of topics.

"Primarily people just get a buzz out of the site. Kids contact me wanting to become lighthouse keepers. Adults contact me wanting to be lighthouse keepers,"

Macdonald said. Macdonald says the internet definitely has stimulated interest in lighthouses.

"I certainly wouldn't have acted to do this if I hadn't been so appalled by the lack of representation of Australian lighthouses on the net," Macdonald said. "It also gives small groups lobbying for the preservation of lights a voice they would have never had in the conventional communications system."

Back in the states, one of the biggest forces for lighthouses on the internet is also the primary lighthouse publication. Tim Harrison, editor of Lighthouse Digest, says the site for Lighthouse Digest ( http://www.lhdigest.com) and Lighthouse Depot (http:www.lighthousedepot.com) have about 360,000 hits per month.

"About 73% of our hits are from the USA with the rest from other countries, with England, Germany and the Netherlands being at the top of the foreign hits. I think this is due to the large number of products we have, along with the wide range of information," Harrison said. Harrison said work now is underway that will create a virtual lighthouse community on the Lighhouse Depot site. If, for example, someone orders a model of the Nubble Light in Maine, the site will tell what else is for sale involving that light, link them to stories Lighthouse Digest has done about the lighthouse, and give information on visiting it.

While Harrison believes the internet is useful for research, he also notes limitations. For one, popular lighthouses will have information, whereas others won't. And the information on the internet isn't always accurate, he said.

"People have created their own sites, from personal visits to a lighthouse, or information found in books. Many books are simply updates from other books which had a mistake in them and simply kept getting repeated for years." To ensure accuracy, Harrison said most of the information in Lighthouse Digest comes directly from local historical societies, library research centers, old newspaper stories and direct from former keepers and family members and descendants of keepers.

Like most lighthouse sites, the one kept by Lighthouse Digest offers a list of other sites accessible with a click of a mouse. Among them is Lighthouses by Andy, at http://www.usalights.com, kept by Andy and April Montgomery. It gets about 1,500 hits a day, Andy Montgomery reports. "It amazes me every day to see the numbers of people who visit the site. The contacts with other lighthouse enthusiasts is just one of the many reasons we have built the site."

More clicks of the mouse and a few keystrokes brings the computer/lighthouse buff to the site of the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, at http://ecnews.outer-banks.com.

Cheryl Roberts, whose work on that site includes postings on the move of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina, said the relocation of that lighthouse generated a lot of interest. Each day, she gets a dozen requests or more for subscriptions to the group's free update service, from throughout the world.

"We have enjoyed a tremendously positive experience in meeting folks via the internet site," Roberts said. "J.B. Ruffin of the outer-banks.com project keeps our site as a courtesy. We are all volunteers and appreciate the many people who get information from us and receive the Hatteras move updates who send us a note of thanks. Words of encouragement and appreciation go a long way for those of us who do this as a community service and give of our time to try and make a little difference."

If Roberts and others see their lighthouse work as a labor of love, they may have feelings similar to Bill Britten, the head of computer systems in the University of Tennessee Libraries in Knoxville. He reports his Lighthouse Getaway site at http://zuma.lib.utk.edu/lights.html most months gets hits from more than 60 countries.

"My wife and I fell in love in 1988, and a lighthouse metaphor was one of our symbols for that love. We felt that lighthouses were a symbol of maintaining faith in your personal light, even though most people "pass like ships in the night" and rarely comment on how your light has impacted their lives," Britten said.

"Many people e-mail me simply to say "thank you," and the most frequent comment in this category is about the feeling of peace and tranquility that they get from looking at my photos, especially during a hectic day," Britten said.

Among Britten's favorite sites is the National Maritime Initiative, at http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/maritime/maripark.html, offering lists of lighthouses, ships and other maritime resources in the National Park Service, and links to many of those sites.

Candace Clifford, who keeps that site for the National Maritime Initiative, a program within the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., said in one recent week, the maritime site got 18,018 hits from 4,951 users, and e-mail about everything and anything. "The most common request seems to be people wanting to keep or own a lighthouse," she said.

From the site of the National Maritime Initiative, the surfer may move to one called "New England Lighthouses: A Virtual Guide" at http://www.lighthouse.cc. It's kept by Jeremy D'Entremont, a media archivist for Boston public television station WGBH, freelance writer and freelance producer. He also originated the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands website, at http://www.tiac.net/users/fbhi. and created and maintains the Shore Village Museum website at http://www.lighthouse.cc/shorevillage.

D'Entremont said he gets many e-mails from people asking about lighthouses with overnight accommodations, which lighthouses to visit, as well as people who either lived at lighthouses or have relatives who were lighthouse keepers.. "I've developed some great e-mail friendships with these people, and I love getting personal stories of lighthouse life."

Meanwhile, Rick Sturgill, an accountant who operates "Rick's Electronic Lighthouse Magazine" ( http://hometown.aol.com/rcsturgill/lite.html) from Johnson City, Tenn., reports international interest in his site featuring original lighthouse photographs, historical information and personal observations.

"I am approaching 3,000 hits and I have received e-mails from all over the world from people that enjoyed the site. I have had several people plan trips to lighthouses based on what they read and saw on my website about the areas," Sturgill said.

Don Uvick also says he's gotten lots of interesting e-mail at his Lighthouses by Don Uvick site, at http://www.creative-visions.com/litehse.htm. Uvick, an operations research analyst and website keeper at the Naval Inventory Control Point in Mechanicsburg, Pa., said he runs the site to promote his photography business and his wife's watercolor/illustrations business, and to share his interest in lighthouses.

Uvick's e-mail comes from the likes of art enthusiasts, lighthouse "keepers" and lighthouse followers. In a recent 28-day period, he received hits from 1,589 unique users.

His last report showed a peak viewing time of around 3 p.m., when most people are working. Wonder if the boss knows about this.

This story appeared in the June 1999 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.

All contents copyright © 1995-2024 by Lighthouse Digest®, Inc. No story, photograph, or any other item on this website may be reprinted or reproduced without the express permission of Lighthouse Digest. For contact information, click here.


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