(According to the U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office, 122 women
were appointed as official lighthouse keepers from 1845 to 1912)
Port Isabel, Texas — November 15, 1860
The night air tasted like salt and iron. It pressed in through the cracks of the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, carrying the murmur of the Gulf of Mexico, a sound Hannah Harn had come to know as well as her own breathing. Outside, the beacon atop the Port Isabel Lighthouse shone steady, its beam sweeping toward the Brazos Santiago Pass. Hannah had lit it promptly at 5:00 p.m., ensuring its operation through another night.
Feeling restless, she left the cottage, walked the stone pathway to the lighthouse, and climbed its spiral staircase. The sleeves of her dark wool dress were rolled neatly to her elbows, revealing forearms strong from years of polishing brass and trimming wicks. When she got to the lantern room, she checked her pocket watch. 12:13 a.m.
She gazed out at the sea, its surface ink-black under the stars. As the beam from the great Fresnel lens swept back and forth, she allowed herself a satisfied smile. It felt good to be responsible for such a marvel of engineering, its concentric rings of glass magnifying the flame until its light could be seen for twenty miles. Her late husband, John, had been so proud when the lens arrived from France and they installed it, replacing the old whale oil lamps they’d tended since the lighthouse opened in 1852.
“It’s like holding a star in your hands,” he said, his weathered face illuminated by wonder as he lit the new apparatus. “Just think, Hannah, our light reaching out so far. All those sailors find their way home because of what we do here.”
Hannah’s throat tightened. For almost a year now, she’d kept the light alone, ever since John died of a sudden heart attack. They had just finished breakfast and he’d been laughing at something she’d said about gulls defecating on the observation deck. Suddenly, he slumped to the floor and went silent. She tried to revive him to no avail. She ran out of their cottage and into town, knocking frantically on the local doctor’s door, but by the time they got back, it was no use. The doctor told her it was the Lord’s will, a phrase she has always despised.
The very next day, despite her grief, she told the Harbormaster that she would take over John’s duties. He stared at her, first in disbelief, then in mild amusement.
“It’s highly irregular,” he said, avoiding her eyes and shuffling papers on his desk. “A woman keeper…”
But Hannah persisted. John had taught her everything, she explained. How to trim the wick, how to calculate the right amount of whale oil, how to read the weather in the colors of the sunset and direction of the wind. Then she told the Harbormaster of another Hannah—Hannah Thomas—the first woman lighthouse keeper in America, a story she had learned in Massachusetts before moving to Texas. After her husband died in the Revolutionary War, Thomas tended the strategic Gurnet Light on Plymouth Bay for ten years, an inspiration to other women in a patriarchal era.
“I’m perfectly qualified,” Hannah concluded. “And who better? I learned from the man himself. Is it more irregular to appoint me, or let the lighthouse go dark while you search for someone to learn what I already know?”
He’d given her the appointment. Conditional, temporary, subject to review. That had been nearly a year ago, and the light had burned every night without fail. Ships laden with Texas cotton—bales upon bales of white gold bound for New Orleans and beyond—passed safely through the channel under her watch. She’d earned her place as the only female lighthouse keeper on the Texas coast.
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Tonight, the air seemed preternaturally still, the sea smooth as glass. Stars shone clear and bright in a crystalline sky, undimmed by the occasional fog of the Gulf. On the horizon, a faint flicker marked the last departing ship of the day. The town of Port Isabel glimmered with a few lights, and beyond it to the southwest, mainland Mexico stretched into the distance.
She checked her pocket watch again, 1:15 AM, then sat at a small table she and John had always used. On top of it was a folded copy of the Galveston Daily News, delivered yesterday. She had read it that afternoon. It spoke of Abraham Lincoln’s election just two weeks earlier, as well as the growing talk of secession rippling through the South, including Texas. If conflict broke out between the states, she wondered what would happen to Port Isabel and the status of the lighthouse. It concerned her, but on this night – with the Gulf so peaceful beneath the stars – rumors of war seemed far away.
She pulled out her knitting from a drawer, clicking the needles in a rhythm that matched the lens’s rotation. This had been her evening routine, a meditative cycle of work and watch. During the day, she could walk to town and speak with merchants or sailors’ wives, feeling part of the bustling port community. But at night, she was encased in solitude, alone with the light and her memories.
Her thoughts turned to John. His voice, his laugh, and the rough warmth of his hands. He used to call her “my treasure.” He’d said it the very first day he brought her to Port Isabel as his new bride in the summer of ’52, when the lighthouse was barely finished.
“This is my post,” he’d said, gazing up at the white tower. “And you’re my treasure at the top of it.” After that, he often used that affectionate name for her, saying “Good morning, my treasure” or “What did you read in the paper, my treasure?”
Their marriage wasn’t perfect. They argued like other couples. But Hannah knew that in his heart, John adored her. And unlike most of the other men she observed in South Texas, her treated her as a true equal. It was still so strange to think that she had outlived him and assumed his post.
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Another hour passed and Hannah stayed in the lantern room, not tired enough to retreat to the cottage. The constellations of the Northwestern Hemisphere wheeled overhead, including her favorite, Pegasus. She and John often pored over a lithograph star chart, a prized possession, testing each other’s knowledge of the heavens.
She sighed, lifted her gaze beyond the windows, and that’s when she saw it, a brightness on the horizon.
At first she thought it was a ship, its running lights unusually brilliant. But the light grew too bright, too fast, dazzling against the calm darkness of the sea. It shimmered, swelled, and seemed to move not along the water but above it.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes. As it got closer, she realized it wasn’t a ship. It had no mast, no hull, no motion on the waves. It seemed to be a self-contained ball of molten silver gliding over the water. It pulsed faintly as it drew nearer, casting an eerie radiance.
A shiver ran down her spine. “What on earth…” she murmured.
She opened the door that led to the observation deck and walked out to the railing, the night air heavy with the smell of ocean brine. The light was still coming, faster and brighter, until it hurt to look at.
It reached the shallows, then lifted up from the sea, tall enough that the beam from the Fresnel lens shone straight through it, breaking into a thousand shimmering fragments like sunlight through mist.
It wasn’t lightning. It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t anything she had ever seen. Then, as she stared, it began to move toward the lighthouse and her heart started pounding.
She turned and rushed down the spiral stairs, skirts clutched in one hand, the heavy ring of keys in the other. Every instinct told her to make sure the tower was locked up tightly. When she reached the thick oaken door, the seams around it glowed faintly as the light approached. She bolted it, her fingers trembling, then pressed her ear to the wood.
At first, only silence. Then footsteps, faint at first, approaching along the stone pathway, growing more distinct. Filled with fear, she quickly retreated up the spiral stairs, making sure the door to the lantern room was equally secure. But now, somehow, the footsteps were inside the tower. How could that be? She gripped the brass handle of the lantern room door, making sure it was locked tight.
Still, the footsteps drew closer, echoing on the iron stairs, until they stopped on the other side of the door. She could feel a presence there, could sense it waiting. The silence was broken only by her ragged breathing and the steady tick of the clockwork that turned the lens.
“Who goes there?” she finally called in a sharp voice.
No answer.
“Who’s there?” she demanded again, mustering more courage than she felt.
A pause.
Then, softly—heartbreakingly familiar—came a voice.
“It’s alright, my treasure,” it said. “I will always be near.”
Hannah froze. Her throat closed, and she pressed her hand to her chest.
“John?” she whispered.
But the voice said nothing more.
For long seconds, the world held still. Then the air seemed to exhale. Through the crack beneath the door, she saw the light dimming, softening from white to gold, then to nothing. When she finally dared to open it, the stairwell was empty. But something had changed. The brass railings gleamed brighter than before, as though freshly polished. Behind her, the great Fresnel lens turned in its slow, majestic rhythm, clearer than she had ever seen it.
She stood there for a long time at the top of stairs, one hand resting on the railing as tears blurred her vision.
“My treasure,” he had said. The exact words, his voice as unique as his fingerprints.
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In the morning, the sky dawned cloudless. The wind had picked up from the east, rattling the shutters and carrying the cry of gulls. Hannah went about her duties as usual, though she moved through the day in a quiet daze.
She had convinced herself that, given the late hour, she had fallen asleep at the table and dreamed the whole incident. But outside the cottage, she saw footprints in the sand that led to the stone walkway. They were clearly a man’s. She followed them to the shoreline where they vanished into the surf.
She knelt and touched one, feeling the damp impression under her fingers, and for the first time since John’s death, she wept openly.
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Days passed. Then weeks. A story spread through the small settlement of Port Isabel about a ghostly light seen offshore. Sailors drinking in the local pub said they’d observed a second beacon burning above the lighthouse, even brighter than the Fresnel lens.
Many townsfolk asked Hannah what she thought of the phenomenon. She didn’t deny it had happened but merely agreed with them that it was strange and unprecedented. She never revealed what had happened in those moments. She just kept her routines of tending the lamp and filling the logbook in her neat script. But occasionally, late at night when the wind was low and the sea calm, she swore she could hear footsteps again on the stairs. Never threatening. Never materializing into something she could see. And instead of fear, she felt only comfort and peace.
Sometimes she would speak softly into the silence: “John, if that’s you…” And though she never heard his voice again, the flame of the lens would seem to brighten for a moment, as if in answer.
Krin Van Tatenhove - Words & Images 