GULL ISLAND LIGHT, WISCONSIN .. Is an active light and part of the Apostle Island chain.
HISTORIAL INFORMATION GULL ISLAND LIGHT IS EXTINGUISHED It was the spring of 1969, most of the ice had melted and the weather was beginning to warm. Onboard the CGC Mesquite in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, the crew was preparing to make their annual spring buoy run of taking out the winter marker buoys and replacing them with lighted bell buoys.
As an SNAN1 (for those who don’t know, SNAN1 is an E-3 seaman who has been trained at AtoN school to service lighted Aids to Navigation) the one thing you did not want to hear, you prayed not to hear at this time of year is that Gull Island Light has been reported extinguished and needed to be repaired and that is just what happened this particular spring.
Gull Island is a small sliver of rocky land, barely breaking the surface of Lake Superior a scant ¼ mile off the Northeast point of Michigan Island. The light consists of an open 50-foot high skeletal iron structure that is painted black to increase its effectiveness as a daymark. At the top of the structure accessed only by ladder going up the side of the structure, is a 250 mm, 12 volt DC battery powered optic which flashes a 10-second light seven miles across Lake Superior.
Nesting Seagulls rise from the island to attack us as we approached the island to service the light.The reason you prayed the light didn’t go out during the spring is that thousands of seagulls nest on what we called Gull S##t Island in the spring. As my shipmate and I approached the island in the Mesquite’s fifteen-foot Boston Whaler, a white cloud of seagulls started to rise from the island and began screaming at us overhead. The closer we got, the louder they got and the stronger the stench from all of the bird droppings became, strong enough to gag a maggot.
Once the Whaler was beached the seagulls started dive bombing us to protect their nests and to try and make us retreat from the island. It looked like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. To protect ourselves we were armed with brooms and hard hats. As we made our way through the nests kicking at seagulls that were trying to attack our ankles and swiping at dive bombing seagulls with our brooms, we reached the base of the light. Having survived our encounter with the birds, I made the fifty-foot climb to the top of the tower to service the lamp changer and to check battery voltages while my shipmate remained inside the structure at the base.
Although it made the bird droppings stink all the more, fortunately the wind wasn’t blowing. Because when the wind blew you would have to hang on as the tower would rock from side to side. After replacing the lamp changer I made my way down the tower and then my shipmate and I made a run to the beach to the Whaler.
I made it to the whaler but as I looked back I saw that my shipmate had stumbled and fallen on slippery rocks and fell flat on his chest into all the seagull droppings. He got back up quickly and made it to the Whaler but the front of him was covered with gull crap and stench.
We got in the Whaler and shoved off, but I couldn’t help but think as the Whaler gained speed and the island faded into the distance, that I wish I had thrown my very stinky shipmate overboard so I didn’t have to take the smell back to the ship with me.
Servicing Aids to Navigation in the Coast Guard .. what a life
(Photos courtesy of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore)
