Cape Spencer Lighthouse Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

Prominent Cape Spencer was given its name by Captain George Vancouver during his exploration of Southeast Alaska in 1793-1794. The cape’s namesake was George John Spencer who served as England’s First Lord of the Admiralty from 1794 to 1800. Cape Spencer is an important turning point for vessels sailing between Southcentral and Southeast Alaska. North of Cape Spencer, ships are exposed to the full fury of the ocean as they are forced to transit the Outside Passage, but at Cape Spencer, ships can turn east and pass through Cross Sound and Icy Strait to reach the relatively calm waters of the Inside Passage.

A beacon at Cape Spencer was requested as early as 1906, but it wasn’t until 1912 that this rocky region received its first light – an unmanned acetylene lantern. Funds for a lighthouse to properly mark Cape Spencer were later granted, and construction commenced in May of 1924. One can only imagine how difficult the initial landings on the rocky islet must have been. Surely the first project completed was the landing platform and derrick to facilitate the transfer of further supplies to the construction site.

A single-story reinforced concrete building (51’ x 62’) was built at the summit of the rocky mass to house both the fog signal equipment and the keepers. From the center of the squat structure’s roof, a 14-by-14-foot tower rose another twenty-five feet. A third-order Fresnel lens, designed and constructed in Paris by Barbier, Bernard and Turenne, produced the lighthouse’s flashing characteristic. The only part of the station that could be easily traversed was the hundred yards of plank walkways linking the lighthouse to the boathouse, crane, and garbage chute. The remote station was built at a cost of $174,881 and commenced operation on December 11, 1925. The following summer, Alaska’s first radio beacon was installed at Cape Spencer, further indication of the station’s importance to maritime navigation.

As evidenced by the following stories, a year’s tour of duty at Cape Spencer seems to have provided ample material for a lifetime of interesting dinner conversations. Paul Reager was stationed at Cape Spencer during 1946. He recalls that the station’s groceries came from Pelican City, but the weather often interfered with their regular arrival. As a result, at times they had to be both creative and conservative with their supplies. “I once made a lemon pie out of brass polish, which was high in citric acid. Made a darn good pie too,” remembers Reager. The crew also saved all its cigarette butts and used a rolling machine to make new cigarettes.

Cape Spencer Lighthouse Lens

The Coast Guardsmen stationed at Cape Spencer provided weather reports to nearby villages and private fishing vessels, and kept the light and radio functioning. Still, there was plenty of downtime for the men, which isn’t always a good thing. To pass time, Reager remembers they “did some fishing and some boxing, and sometimes the boxing wasn’t just for fun. When you are on a three-quarter-acre rock for twelve months with two other men, you do have disagreements.”

Pat O’Brien spent part of 1963 and 1964 at Cape Spencer with three other members of the Coast Guard and a German Shepherd named Duke. “I observed many things at Cape Spencer that I have never seen anywhere else,” says O’Brien. “Probably the most dramatic was a tsunami warning. Of course, we got the call in the middle of the night. Can you imagine, with all the danger of getting off the station by crane in daylight, on a calm day, what it was like to abandon the station at night? Once we got our sixteen-foot outboard in the water, we had to weave in and out, avoiding the rock garden, until we reached the safety of an inlet called Dick’s Arm. We did this by putting a man on the bow with a flashlight. Any volunteers? We all had our M1 rifles. We were wide-eyed and loaded for bear. Glad we didn’t see any.”

Fortunately, there was no tsunami that night, but the warnings were definitely taken seriously after the Scotch Cap Lighthouse and its entire crew were lost to a tsunami in 1946. Another unique experience O’Brien had at Cape Spencer occurred one evening when a heavy mist enshrouded the station in a halo of light produced by the lens' four revolving beams.

“It must have been during a major bird migration,” O’Brien said, “because the night sky was filled with millions of little birds, none of them larger than a robin. The beams of light were so heavy with them that it looked like a blizzard in the reflected light. You could hit them with a stick. If you opened the door, the room would fill with birds."

“The rotating light obviously attracted them. Because we received our drinking water off the roof from rainfall, the seaman and myself checked the roof the next morning, and we threw literally bucketfuls of dead birds off the roof; they had died flying into the light. I have never seen so many birds and so many varieties in my life.”

The Coast Guard removed the Fresnel lens from Cape Spencer in 1974, the same year in which the lighthouse was reportedly unmanned. The small lighthouse, perched atop the seventy-foot-tall rock, is still considered an important navigational aid and receives regular Coast Guard visits. These crews are likely glad their stays at the secluded station last only a few hours or at most a couple of days. However, they won’t have the storehouse of memories accumulated by the crews who spent a full year at the station that marks the outermost edge of Southeast Alaska.

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References

1. Northern Lights: Tales of Alaska's Lighthouses and Their Keepers, Shannon Lowry, 1992.
2. Lighthouses and Other Aids to Navigation in Alaskan History, U.S. Coast Guard.

The third-order Fresnel lens and clock works from the Cape Spence Lighthouse are on display at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau.