Race Rock Casts its Spell
Since its completion in 1878, following seven years of arduous effort, Race Rock Light has stimulated responses from writers, dramatists, filmmakers, artists, photographers, modelers, even devotees of things paranormal, all attracted to this picturesque monument to human perseverance.
First to fall under its spell was its builder, Francis Hopkinson Smith, not only a talented civil engineer and artist but a writer of travelogues, novels and short stories. During the Race Rock experience he accumulated ideas and invented characters for a novel centered around a young diver named Caleb West. Using the struggle to build an offshore lighthouse as backdrop, and conjuring plenty of on-shore romance and jealousy, Smith's Caleb West: Master Diver, published in 1898, was the year's best-selling book.
First published by Boston's venerable Houghton, Mifflin Company, it was later republished in New York by Charles Scribner's Sons, and in London by A. P. Watt. Over the years it was marketed with the various cover designs seen here. Caleb West is now available from on-demand publishers, though none of them replicate the attractive covers of early printings.
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Caleb West: Master Diver was adapted as a play by the English writer Michael Morton, and had a short run in 1900 at New York's Manhattan Theatre. Its handsome poster (below) is memorable, but the play has disappeared from view.
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More is known about two silent film versions: The first, in 1912, called simply Caleb West, is the story of a diver on a lighthouse construction project who is somewhat older than his young wife, Betty. Left alone while Caleb is at the project, she finds her life "monotonous and lonesome." A handsome seaman working on the project is interested in Betty, and one can guess how the story proceeds from there.
Another version was Deep Waters, filmed at a California beach in 1920 by Paramount Pictures with a similar storyline. More information may be found on the IMDb website, from which this cropped screenshot was taken.
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The story of the master diver was still attracting publishers and editors in 1926 when Macmillan brought out a quirky collection of writings proclaiming the virtues of hard work in such endeavors as hemp growing, salmon canning, whaling, cattle driving, sheep shearing, and....lighthouse building!
Called The Romance of Labor, its subtitle was "Scenes from Good Novels depicting Joy in Work," and yet again our hero Caleb West shows up.
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With a cover depicting Race Rock Light in a raging sea, Todd Gipstein's 2011 thriller follows two generations of keepers in a mix of fact and fiction involving "failure, guilt, love and redemption." The story begins in 1907 and continues in 1938 when "the hurricane of the century bears down on this man-made island in the middle of the sea."
(From the announcement of a book signing and discussion at the Custom House Maritime Museum in July, 2011.)
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Race Rock Light as Image
The lighthouse has been the subject of countless photographs, whether by Coast Guardsmen, boaters, ferry passengers or professional photographers, but relatively few painters have depicted it on canvas. One who did was Charles B. Ferguson (1918-2018), born on Fishers Island and an artist, teacher of art, and former Director of the New Britain Museum of American Art.
McGuire Library's copy of Ferguson's Twenty-seven Views of Race Rock Lighthouse in the Four Seasons (Fishers Island, North Hill Press, 2000) is the gift of the Island's Henry L. Ferguson Museum.
The jacket image is the first painting in the book: "SO' EASTER (Spring)"
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A chiseled image of Race Rock Light in afternoon sun provided the October illustration for a calendar by Maine graphic artist Alan Claude, its retro style hearkening back to the golden age of posters in the Twenties and Thirties.
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Below: This charming lithograph of Race Rock, with flash characteristic and fog signal frequency, is an 1889 "tobacco card" printed by W. Duke & Sons, a tobacco company. Then a popular form of advertising, tobacco cards are now collectible.
Printed on the verso: "Smoke and chew honest long-cut tobacco"
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And then there are the models. This diminutive commercial souvenir in the Museum collection stands in sharp contrast to the large one-of-a-kind model by Bob Landry shown below.
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Race Rock's distinctive profile, steep roof, lantern, Gothic details, masonry, and even its protective riprap, form an arresting composition displaying both grace and strength.
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We leave Race Rock with this starry night view by professional photographer David Zapatka, who fell under its spell several years ago. David specializes in night views that capture the essence of lighthouses, overlaid with a whiff of lurking danger; the danger which is, in fact, the lighthouse's reason for being.
