Not much grows on Sombrero Island. It’s hard to imagine anything flourishing on its flat, barren landscape, pocked with lunar-like craters – the most visible sign of the phosphate mines that used to operate here in the 1800s. Prickly pear plants cling onto the rocks. The island provides a nesting site for thousands of sea birds of several species and is home to the black ground lizard. Sam Richardson was one of the last men to tend the lighthouse here before it was automated in 2001. For Sam, Sombrero was work, recreation and family for thirty-one years.
Sombrero is a remote island of roughly 95 acres, lying 40 miles off the coast of Anguilla. Three quarters of a mile long and less than a quarter mile wide, it is bordered by sheer cliffs twenty to forty feet high. It has no beaches and no soil. Unless you’re a bird, access is a challenge – there is only a very steep ladder. Sombrero is home to a lighthouse that warns ships travelling through the shipping lane known as the Anegada Passage. The first light shone out on January 1, 1868.
Sam’s watch started in 1970, when he was just 21. In those days, employment opportunities were fairly limited. Men either fished, worked in the salt ponds or migrated to other islands in search of a living. Sam’s last day on Sombrero was that fateful day, 9.11. 2001, when the Sombrero lighthouse was finally automated.
Perhaps understandably for someone who spent thirty one years adrift in the middle of the ocean with only four companions, Sam likes to talk. He was part of a team that consisted of a Principal Keeper, two assistant keepers and a cook. They would each spend six weeks on Sombrero and two weeks leave back on Anguilla. According to Sam, those six weeks flew by. Unless you got to brooding, that is. “Sometimes it could get a little boring if you started to think too much.”
It would take three to four hours to get to or from Sombrero and for many years this journey was made on the schooner ‘Warspite’. The same boat that ferried the staff also brought in vital food provisions as well as diesel to power the generators. Every two weeks, one staff member would go on leave and a replacement would arrive. There was talk of changing the rota so that staff would spend a month on and a month off Sombrero. But it was decided that a month was too long to spend back at home. If the keepers got a taste for life on Anguilla again, it would be difficult for them to uproot and settle back on Sombrero.
Days on Sombrero followed a strict pattern. Before electrification, the lighthouse was powered by a kerosene lamp. As with parents tending a newborn, the day was structured around the needs of the light. The night shift would be divided into three watches of roughly four hours, keepers guarding the light to make sure it stayed alight with a constant supply of oxygen. A weathervane guided the keepers as to the direction of the wind, so that they could open the correct vents in the light room to bring in enough air flow.
It wasn’t hard for them to stay awake during their shift, although occasionally they did fall asleep. The light would be extinguished at daybreak as the sun rose.
Breakfast was served by the cook at 7 am and the keepers tried to keep to a healthy regime. Fried or scrambled eggs were only served on Sundays, boiled eggs the rest of the time. And no bacon!
Mornings were spent on maintenance work. There was much to do, from polishing brass, cleaning soot from the lens, wire brushing the steelwork or painting. They also tended to the winch that lifted supplies up from the arriving boats.
Lunch was served at 11 am so that the men could sleep in the afternoon before the long evening shifts began. Tea (famously good, according to the visitor logbooks) was served at 4 with biscuits or bread.
As the sun set, it would take about half an hour to prepare the light. The burner was pre-heated and Sam remembers the precise task of checking the pressure tanks, to make sure they were set with enough air pressure to send the paraffin up to the burner. The light operated by means of a clock system, with pendulums and weights that would rotate the lamp. Winding up the weights kept the light rotating to its required rhythm of one flash every five seconds. This pattern was the unique ‘fingerprint’ that enabled ships to recognise the light as the Sombrero lighthouse. The light could turn for a maximum of four hours without the weights being wound. It was an arduous task to wind up from scratch and dangerous to leave it this long. If an injudicious nap took place and the weights became fully unwound, they would crash to the ground with a bang loud enough to wake up sleeping staff in the quarters nearby. A scenario best avoided when sleep was a precious commodity, available only in small portions. So every one to two hours they would wind up the weights.
A ‘ship to shore’ radio set enabled the staff to communicate with coastguards, as well as colleagues on Anguilla. By radioing an operator in Saba, they were even able to be connected to numbers in Anguilla. Sam remembers phoning home this way one Christmas Day and surprising his family.
With food supplies only arriving once a month, most of their provisions were canned or dried. But they never ran out of food. The keepers supplemented their stock and fished for Trigger fish or Butter fish, often catching enough to freeze the surplus and send it home to their families. They picked whelks off the rocks to make stews or soups. Eggs were plentiful from the terns that nested there. The cook made dumplings, or rice and peas. Coconut trees were planted, but they didn’t survive.
Living on a small rock meant that opportunities for relaxing or keeping fit were fairly limited. One extreme workout was the gruelling climb up to the light room at the tower’s summit. The lighthouse stood 126 feet high off the ground. When asked if he remembers how many steps there were, Sam replies, “I can’t forget that. I could never forget that. 163 steps! ” Operating the manual winch that would haul provisions up from the supply boat was another good workout as the loads were usually heavy. For recreation, the keepers snorkelled and fished. Once Sam saw a large shark while snorkelling, which, thankfully, was not interested in him. They listened to the radio, played cards or dominoes and star-gazed. Sam remembers seeing shooting stars and comets.
Passing ships would make their presence known, even though they could be three or four miles away. Huge tankers travelling north from South America, laden with cargoes of fruits or Argentinian beef, would often wake them up with their sirens.
The staff kept dogs, partly for company but also because even a remote rock like Sombrero would get unexpected visitors and you never knew if they were friendly or not. Sam recalls only the friendly sort – sailors mostly, travelling round the Caribbean, drawn by the romantic lure of the lighthouse. And almost all would want to visit the light, often running up the spiral staircase of, yes, 163 steps. A quick glance through the Lighthouse visitor books reveals visitors from Europe as well as the States, the Governor of Anguilla and technicians from the UK. Some brought gifts, others dived for their lobster dinners. The water round the island was so clear, that even at a depth of fifty feet, Sam could see the starfish on the sea bed.
While life was lonely and could be difficult on Sombrero, Sam and his colleagues were glad to have a job. Employment was scarce back on Anguilla, and the lighthouse work gave them a pension. But being marooned out on the rock could pose a problem if illness struck or accidents happened. Sam recalls the occasion when the cook was fishing for dinner. A previous infection had left him with only one eye. While pulling up his line, the weight got caught and, as he pulled, it came free, smashing his glasses. A sliver of glass went into his eyelid and so medical attention was urgently needed. A helicopter arrived from St. Croix, managing to land even though there was no landing pad. Soon afterwards, one was built.
But the most dramatic memory for Sam is the arrival of Hurricane Luis on September 5, 1995. “That was scary”, he says quietly, with admirable understatement. Luis, along with Hurricane Donna, was the strongest hurricane to strike the northern Leewards Islands in the twentieth century.
Normally lighthouse staff were taken back to the safety of Anguilla two or three days before a hurricane hit. With Luis’ unexpected change of direction, they were trapped on Sombrero before they could be rescued. The tiny island was in the merciless grip of Luis with the sea battering the coastline in huge swells. At 2 pm on Tuesday September 5, as Sam and a colleague sheltered indoors, watching television to get news of the hurricane’s progress, waves crashed over the cliffs and ripped off the shutters of the dining room and recreational area. Seawater surged into the single storey buildings, filling them with water. Sam tells how his friend yelled at him: “the sea gave you a warning – get out or else!”. With water up to their necks they only just managed to escape. They ran outside and sheltered in the concrete basement of the lighthouse tower. This decision undoubtedly saved their lives. As they left their quarters, another huge swell crashed over the roof.
The light was inoperable that night. Water had entered the cable system and the generator broke. In the light room, the heavy rocking of the lighthouse tower spilled mercury, as the full fury of the hurricane was experienced. At 9 30 pm, there was a lull in wind speeds as the eye of the hurricane passed. About midnight, windspeeds increased again, as the second wall passed over. It was only later the following morning that it was safe for the keepers to inspect the damage. Nearly everything had been washed away or destroyed. They were left without clothes, beds or possessions. Some things were found as they searched the areas around the buildings. Sam laughs as he remembers the loss of a new pair of underwear. Luckily, he found them, snared on a prickly pear. He was careful to remove all the prickles before attempting to wear them.
And so began the huge task of removing debris and clearing the living quarters. The entire station had been devastated, except the steel structure of the lighthouse. The generator was flooded. No radio communication with Anguilla was possible as the radio batteries had become displaced and had no power. But, amazingly, the lamp was operable again the following night.
Most serious was the lack of fresh water. Luis had ripped off the covers of the cisterns and they were now flooded with seawater. Only a few bottles of drinking water remained and there was very little rainwater to collect. Water was their immediate priority but they were unable to radio for help. On Thursday around midnight, a helicopter from the Royal Navy vessel ‘Southampton’ hovered over Sombrero for fifteen minutes, while the keepers tried to identify themselves. It returned on Friday morning, bringing out the Assistant Supervisor for a brief assessment of the damages. On Saturday the helicopter returned with supplies including food, water, towels, bedlinen, a transistor radio, battery charger and radio transmitter. Two engineers arrived by helicopter on Sunday to repair the electrical system at the station. They brought with them more supplies. The keepers began to clean the seawater out from the cisterns using a submersible pump, so that freshwater supplies could resume.
On October 27, the Governor of Anguilla, Alan Shave, visited and wrote in the station log book: “The damage caused by Hurricane Luis is astonishing and it would be hard to imagine the destructive power of wind and wave without having seen it. Happily, the keepers are in good heart.”
When Sam left Sombrero in 2001, he missed his days as a lighthouse keeper. Back on Anguilla, he would often wake in the night, expecting a call to begin his shift. He found that the new colleagues and routines that his new job brought were not as reliable as the ones he was used to. Now, Sam still keeps watch at night, over the CuisinArt golf course estate. The night hours suit him, he says. After thirty-one years on Sombrero, he’s become something of a night owl.
(With thanks to Steve and Suzie Donahue for their help in creating this article.)
