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Farallon Islands of California San Francisco Bay
Farallon Islands of California San Francisco Bay
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Kindle version of vintage magazine article originally published in 1874. Contains lots of great info and illustrations seldom seen in the last 140 years.
Read excerpt -
The Farallones are seldom visited by travelers or pleasure-seekers. The wind blows fiercely here most of the time; the ocean is rough; and to persons subject to seasickness the short voyage is filled with the misery of that disease. Yet they contain a great deal that is strange and curious. On the highest point of the South Farallon the gov¬ernment has placed a light-house, a brick tower seventeen feet high, surmounted by a lantern and illuminating apparatus. It is a revolving white light, showing a prolonged flash of ten seconds duration once in a minute. The light is about 360 feet above the sea, and with a clear atmosphere is visible, from a position ten feet high, twenty-five and a half miles distant; from an elevation of sixty feet it can be seen nearly thirty-one miles away; and it is plainly visible from Sulphur Peak on the main-land, 3471 feet high and sixty-four and a half miles distant. The light-house is in latitude 37° 41' 8" north and longitude 122° 59' 05" west.
On our foggy Western coast it has been necessary to place the light-houses low, because if they stood too high their light would be hidden in fog-banks and low clouds. The tower on the South Farallon is therefore low; and this, no doubt, is an advantage also to the light-keepers, who are less exposed to the buffetings of the storm than if their labor and care lay at a higher elevation.
As the Farallones lie in the track of vessels coming from the westward to San Francisco, the light is one of the most important, as it is also one of the most powerful on our Western coast; and it is supplemented by a fog-whistle which is one of the most curious contrivances of this kind in the world. It is a huge trumpet, six inches in diameter at its smaller end, and blown by the rush of air through a cave or passage connecting with the ocean.
One of the numerous caves worn into the rocks by the surf had a hole at the top, through which the incoming breakers violently expelled the air they carried before them. Such spout-holes are not uncommon on rugged, rocky coasts. There are several on the Mendocino coast, and a number on the shores of the Sandwich Islands. This one, however, has been utilized by the ingenuity of man. The mouth-piece of the trumpet or fog-whistle is fixed against the aperture in the rock, and the breaker, dashing in with venomous spite, or the huge bulging wave which would dash a ship to pieces and drown her crew in a single effort, now blows the fog-whistle and warns the mariner off. The sound thus produced has been heard at a distance of seven or eight miles. It has a peculiar effect, because it has no regular period; depending upon the irregular coming in of the waves, and upon their similarly irregular force, it is blown somewhat as an idle boy would blow his penny trumpet. It ceases entirely for an hour and a half at low water, when the mouth of the cave or passage is exposed.
The life of the keepers of the Farallon light is singularly lonely and monotonous.
Read excerpt -
The Farallones are seldom visited by travelers or pleasure-seekers. The wind blows fiercely here most of the time; the ocean is rough; and to persons subject to seasickness the short voyage is filled with the misery of that disease. Yet they contain a great deal that is strange and curious. On the highest point of the South Farallon the gov¬ernment has placed a light-house, a brick tower seventeen feet high, surmounted by a lantern and illuminating apparatus. It is a revolving white light, showing a prolonged flash of ten seconds duration once in a minute. The light is about 360 feet above the sea, and with a clear atmosphere is visible, from a position ten feet high, twenty-five and a half miles distant; from an elevation of sixty feet it can be seen nearly thirty-one miles away; and it is plainly visible from Sulphur Peak on the main-land, 3471 feet high and sixty-four and a half miles distant. The light-house is in latitude 37° 41' 8" north and longitude 122° 59' 05" west.
On our foggy Western coast it has been necessary to place the light-houses low, because if they stood too high their light would be hidden in fog-banks and low clouds. The tower on the South Farallon is therefore low; and this, no doubt, is an advantage also to the light-keepers, who are less exposed to the buffetings of the storm than if their labor and care lay at a higher elevation.
As the Farallones lie in the track of vessels coming from the westward to San Francisco, the light is one of the most important, as it is also one of the most powerful on our Western coast; and it is supplemented by a fog-whistle which is one of the most curious contrivances of this kind in the world. It is a huge trumpet, six inches in diameter at its smaller end, and blown by the rush of air through a cave or passage connecting with the ocean.
One of the numerous caves worn into the rocks by the surf had a hole at the top, through which the incoming breakers violently expelled the air they carried before them. Such spout-holes are not uncommon on rugged, rocky coasts. There are several on the Mendocino coast, and a number on the shores of the Sandwich Islands. This one, however, has been utilized by the ingenuity of man. The mouth-piece of the trumpet or fog-whistle is fixed against the aperture in the rock, and the breaker, dashing in with venomous spite, or the huge bulging wave which would dash a ship to pieces and drown her crew in a single effort, now blows the fog-whistle and warns the mariner off. The sound thus produced has been heard at a distance of seven or eight miles. It has a peculiar effect, because it has no regular period; depending upon the irregular coming in of the waves, and upon their similarly irregular force, it is blown somewhat as an idle boy would blow his penny trumpet. It ceases entirely for an hour and a half at low water, when the mouth of the cave or passage is exposed.
The life of the keepers of the Farallon light is singularly lonely and monotonous.
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