|
On June 22, 1918, the Maine Machias Republican carried a very sad report of the tragic drowning of 26-year-old first assistant lighthouse keeper Samuel Holbrook that had occurred six days earlier at nearby Libby Island Lighthouse.
Samuel, who had been a lighthouse keeper there for the past three years, had gone out fishing in the station peapod with Justin A. Foss, second assistant. According to the newspaper account, “Holbrook was sitting in the stern and Foss rowing. The water was quite rough and in some way Holbrook went overboard and the boat was capsized. Foss saved his life by clinging to the boat which was filled with water but floating. Holbrook did not come up to the surface…. Holbrook was a very large and heavy man, and the boat, a small one, and was pitching quite badly in the choppy sea.”
The wives of the two men, Bertha Holbrook and Ada Foss, watched the whole debacle from the lighthouse reservation about 200 yards away and raised the general alarm to William H. Kane and Harry Kippell who were also stationed on Libby Island as part of the naval reserve. Unfortunately, head keeper, Albion T. Faulkingham, had gone ashore some time earlier, so Kane and Kippell “ran far out on the ledges and as the boat drifted in succeeded in pulling Foss, who was much exhausted and chilled, upon the ledge.”
A message was then telephoned to the commander of the Coast Patrol District who sent the cruiser Pauline to bring the three men back to the lighthouse as they were stranded out on the ledges with the changing tide cutting them off from the island.
A search for Samuel Holbrook followed, but he was not found and “it was feared the strong tide has carried the remains out to sea.” His body was finally recovered three months later on September 2, 1918. The current had carried him 80 miles south to within five miles of Swan’s Island where he had been born.
It was said of Samuel Holbrook that he was “held in high regard by all who knew him of the finest character and a kind genial temperament.” Family photos showed him to be a loving father to his three-year-old daughter, Ethel, for whom he made a doll cradle out of the lighthouse kerosene crates for her upcoming birthday. It is very sad that he was never able to give her that gift.
Beyond leaving a grieving wife and daughter, Samuel’s death must have been extremely traumatic for his parents, lighthouse keeper Elmer F. Holbrook and his wife Eunice, who were at Isle of Haut Lighthouse at the time. Samuel’s brother, Ansel, had died in 1903 from a liver abscess at the age of 18 while living at Matinicus Rock Lighthouse when Elmer F. Holbrook was serving there. Medical help would have been nearly impossible to get at that isolated duty station twenty miles offshore.
To lose two adult sons due to lighthouse-related service must have been very hard for Elmer and Eunice to bear. These deaths exemplify the great risks that all lighthouse keepers and their families regularly accepted in living in such isolated locations in order to protect other people’s lives at the possible expense of their own. We honor their sacrifices in publishing their photos for the first time in 100 years so that they may not be forgotten.
This story appeared in the
Sep/Oct 2019 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.
| 