For those who frequently use the Staten Island Ferry, “Kate’s Light” is no stranger, but it’s still a bit of a mystery.
The squat light house sits on the lower side of New York Harbor, just north of Staten Island, and east of Bayonne, marking the place where a reef puts ships coming to or going from the Kill Van Kull in dangers.
The reef – originally named by the early Dutch settlers as Robyn’s Rift – or seal’s rock for the numerous seals found lounging there – was enough of a navigational hazard to ships that in 1839 the first lighthouse was constructed in the area. Known as the Bergen Point Lighthouse, the federal government increased its height with a 46-foot granite tower in 1850 after several boats crashed into the shallow walls of the Kill Van Kull. The base of the original lighthouse still stands in the harbor.
The second smaller lighthouse known now as Kate’s Light, was constructed of cast iron slightly south of the former lighthouse – the base of which still stands – in 1883.
“This is the second lighthouse constructed in that area in the 1800s,” said Bayonne City historian Joseph Ryan.
Disasters in Kill Van Kull were frequent, stranding ferries, tug boats, barges, schooners, and even cruise ships.
In a 1930 New York Times article, Arthur Warner described the isolation of the lighthouse as framed by the black smoke of Bayonne’s factories and the a remoteness that geniuses like Albert Einstein might envy, so isolated among the cross currents that few could easily visit it.
Named after the long time light keeper Catherine Walker, by the U.S. Coast Guard which has been seeking to get historic distinction for the site, the site has become a symbol of a past in which New York Harbor was the center of the seafaring world.
The brown and white lighthouse that still guards the approaches to the Kill Van Kull is part of a love story that goes back to when Catherine met her future husband John Walker, an assistant keeper of the Sandy Hook Lighthouse. When John was assigned the keeper of Robbins Reef after its reconstruction in 1883, she moved in with him.
“When I first arrived I refused to unpack my bags,” she told the New York Times in 1909. “Everywhere I looked there was water. No grass. No land. Just water. It depressed and frightened me.”
The lighthouse was built on a man-made island with no land or mooring around it. Their boat hung from a platform on the side. Their home was fitted around the base of the light with a small terrace where Catherine served tea in the summer if and when friends rowed out to visit her.
“The lighthouse is surrounded by water,” she told the New York Times. “I reach the shore in a rowboat that I keep fastened to the outside wall by a chain.”
During her years with John, she had learned her husband’s duties well enough that when her husband fell sick, she sent him ashore for medical attention and kept up the duties herself. She still cared for the light when a boat came out with the message that her husband had died pneumonia and his dying words said to Catherine, “Mind the light, Kate.”
For years she mourned his passing.
“Every morning when the sun comes up I stand at the porthole and look towards his grave,” she is quoted in historic records kept by the Robbins Reef Yacht Club. “Sometimes the hills are brown. Sometimes they are green, sometimes they are white with snow. But always they bring a message from him, something I heard him say more oftener than anything else. Just three words,: Mind the light.”
That was 1886, and she he carried on her husband’s request, but not at first with official approval. The government tried to recruit other keepers to take over, but none would take the assignment. So eventually the 4 foot 10 inch tall Catherine with the help of her son Jacob ran the lighthouse. Her granddaughter lived in the isolated tower for a while, but died there while still a child.
In raising her two children there, Catherine had hardships few mothers know today.
“She used to row her children to mainland each day so they could go to school,” Ryan said.
She said she grew to love that place, despite the isolation, feeling as if she was doing an important job.
“Someone could offer me a millionaire’s mansion and I’d feel like I was in a prison,” she told the New York Times.
She was right. And over the years, she rescued more than 50 people, even rescuing a Scottish Terrier from the freezing harbor waters after a schooner crashed on the reef.
“It has surprised me how lightly the men and women I’ve rescued seemed to value their lives,” she said in one account. “Only three or four ever knelt down and thanks God for their deliverance from death. Usually they joke and laugh about it. Often they say: `Please don’t tell anyone of this.’ They’re ashamed of having mishandled their boats.”
She knew how treacherous the waters were and took precautions, and said she feared land more than she did the waterways.
“I never leave the light except when the day is fair and there is not the least sign of rain,” she told the New York Times. “But even so, I have come back three hours later in terrible storms. I have only known fear on land. I am afraid of streetcars and automobiles. I have to go to New York about twice a year on business. I am in fear from the time I leave the ferryboat.”
She said she was never tempted to get onto an automobile, and sometimes mistook the noon time whistle of a factory for the whistle of a ship she knew had been scrapped. She had a good ear. The factory had actually purchased the whistle from the ruins of the ship.
Catherine continued to perform her duties until advancing age drained her strength, at which point her son took on more of her duties. She eventually retired from the post, although the lighthouse continued and in 1939, when the U.S. Coast Guard took over operations, they assigned a three-man crew to live there and do the work Catherine had performed on her own.
In 1996, the Coast Guard – to show their respect for the Catherine – named 175-foot vessel after her with its homeport the U.S. Coast Guard facility in Bayonne – within a whistle’s call of the lighthouse she tended.
“If you know the Coast Guard you’d understand just how rare it is for them to name anything after a woman,” Ryan said.