Thank You EMC Chase Miller for Your Service to the Lights!

 

On June 8, 2026, U.S. Coast Guard Aids to Navigation Team Southwest Harbor, Maine, bid adieu to EMC Chase Miller, head of the unit’s lighthouse department. During his four-year tenure at the ANT, Chase was the consummate professional who lent his many skills and leadership to helping keep lighthouses – 26 in all, watching properly from Port Clyde, Maine, to the Canadian border.

Longtime lighthouse keeper and author Robert Thayer Sterling once said that the keeper of a light “must know his equipment and how to use it. His light, with its delicate mechanism, and his fog signals are instruments which must be kept going perfectly. A slight change in the warnings of a particular light might lead a ship to disaster instead of safety.”

Mr. Sterling penned these words during the 1930s, but as much as things change, they remain the same. Today, USCG lighthouse technicians like Chase Miller have adhered to the same type of focus and commitment when it comes to keeping 21st century lights and fog horns in tip-top shape.

When a mariner or landlubber sees a lighthouse “winking & blinking” at night – or hears a foghorn bellowing out its audible warning through a shroud of misty vapor, they can rest assure that the men and women of the United States Coast Guard are maintaining the same spirit of vigilance that the bygone keepers of the United States Lighthouse Service were renowned for.

Instead of filling lamps with oil or kerosene, winding clockwork mechanisms, polishing brass or keeping a light station inspection-ready at all times like the old-time “Wickies,” the work of Chase Miller and other modern Coast Guard lighthouse technicians entails (in part) inspecting LED optics, replenishing incandescent lamps, replacing lampchangers, flashers and daylight control units, keeping batteries filled with water, repairing drivers, oscillators and timer cards in sound signals, and maintaining a plethora of other vital electronic equipment associated with the operation of the lights and horns.

U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse technicians are not considered lighthouse keepers, though they keep a good light. They do not reside at a lighthouse yet they retrace the keeper’s every step. It is said that history closed the book on lighthouse keepers during automation, though human hands are still needed today. And yes, history is still quietly being made by light and sound – and service, as Coastguardsmen continue to help protect mariners and honor the longstanding traditions of America’s lightkeeping legacy.

Though lighthouses have not been staffed by resident keepers in Maine since 1990, there are still dedicated professionals watching over them – EMC Chase Miller has been one of them over the past four years at USCG ANT Southwest Harbor. The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter KATMAI BAY (WTGB-101), a 140-foot Bay Class Icebreaking Tug homeported in Sault Sainte Marie, MI, – EMC Miller’s new tour of duty, is welcoming a superb shipmate.

Thank you Chase for being a great keeper of the lights and shipmate while at USCG ANT Southwest Harbor – you not only helped keep Maine’s lighthouses watching properly, but also helped forge plenty of modern-day lighthouse history as well!

EMC Chase Miller helped keep the optics and sound signals watching properly at two American Lighthouse Foundation lights – Owls Head Lighthouse and Little River Lighthouse, as well as at two ALF affiliates – Burnt Coat Harbor Light, Friends of the Swans Island Lighthouse, and West Quoddy Head Light, West Quoddy Head Light Keepers Association, from spring 2022 to spring 2026.