Little River Lighthouse Memories

The following comments were made by Neil Corbett, son of Willie Corbett, who served as keeper of Little River Lighthouse in Cutler from 1921 to 1945. The quotes appeared in the book, The Rockbound Coast: Travels in Maine, by Christopher Little, 1994.

In speaking of Little River Light Station, Neil Corbett stated, “I lived in that lighthouse for eighteen years. My father lived there even longer than that.”

When talking about the equipment at the station, it was evident that the clockworks mechanism for both the light and fog bell made an impression on a young Neil Corbett. He recalled the clockworks, saying, “The clock revolved the light one complete turn every fifteen seconds, and if it was foggy the bell machine would hit the bell every thirty. When that clock came around to a certain point, it would trip a gizmo that would hit the bell.”

Corbett went on to say, “Every five hours you’d have to wind those weights up just to keep the whole thing going, and it would run for six hours. Most generally, though, we’d wind’em up again after about five. I used to come over to town at night, but I’d always plan on getting home in time to wind those weights if it was foggy. One July we had 525 hours of fog. Golly that was a lot of work!”

In what was a humorous moment, though not necessarily when it happened, Corbett said, “We had a cow on Little River. We’d raise a pig or two, and we had hens and stuff like that. I never carried a flashlight. All the years that I was there I never carried a flashlight. I just got used to the dark. One night I come up over the hill and, by golly, right in the middle of the path that cow was laying there. Boy that took a jump on me…took a jump on her too!”

A sad memory involved a cow as well. Neil Corbett recalled, “We lost a young cow once. We only had her a couple of weeks. She fell off the north side over there. She was feeding on the edge, eating the moss and such like and over she went. She hit the rocks and split her head right open. She was a nice cow, too, boy.”

Finally, when a young Neil Corbett was confined to the island by his father for getting into dust-up, he was less than thrilled about the punishment. “I was one of those fellows who was always up to something. Always up to mischief, if you must know. I done something one time – I guess my brother and I got into a fight or something like that. My father says, ‘All right, you’re grounded. You’re not going to get off this island for a week.’

“I jumped in the air at that. ‘I got off it didn’t I,” a Neil said to his father Willie. Keeper Corbett responded, saying, ‘Yeah, and that’s as far as you’re going.’

“Well, about the third day I’d had enough. I said to my sister Ruth, I said, I think I know how I’m going to get off this island. I sawed an old hogshead barrel right in half, and I got into that tub. I hit the tide just right and by golly I went clear over to the other side and sculled her back again.”

“My father, he heard about that, and didn’t think much of it. But I done it just the same!”