Bearers of light: Lighthouses, wreckers, and false lights

Introduction

Lighthouses

marked dangerous paths and provide a source of safe passage

In 2000 Bella Bathurst won a Somerset Maugham Award for her unusual book, The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Lighthouses saved tens of thousands of lives during a time when sea transport was key to the economy of the British Empire. According to the Shipwreck Index of the British Isles, there are at least 33,000 known wrecks around the British coastline. In the late 1700s a campaign was launched to build lighthouses along the coast of England to guide ships away from treacherous waters.

— An essay on Civilization from Salvo #43 in Opening Salvo, by James M. Kushiner, Social Ills & Opposition to Safe Harbor Lights

Wreckers

often benefitted from destruction.

In researching her book, Bathurst discovered something so surprising that it inspired further research and a subsequent book, The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas and Plundered Shipwrecks, from the 18th Century to the Present Day (2005). She learned that many coast dwellers in England, especially wreckers—as those who made off with shipwrecked goods were called—vigorously opposed the lighthouses and sometimes even resorted to sabotage. This was because they "had a vested interest in ensuring that ships continued being destroyed. Many coastal villages staked their livelihoods on the exotic plunder to be found in dead and dying ships; the wrecker saw their looting as a perk of nautical life and bitterly resented any attempts to interfere. . . . [W]reckers were furious at the prospect of a safer sea."

Wreckers sometimes refused to aid a floundering ship and even went so far as to place false lights to guide ships into danger. Sometimes they killed wreck survivors.

Nags Head derives its name, according to the prevalent etymology, from an old device employed to lure vessels to destruction. A Banks pony was driven up and down the beach at night, with a lantern tied around his neck. The up-and-down motion resembling that of a vessel, the unsuspecting tar would steer for it.

— https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/graveyard-atlan

True lights and false lights

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.””

John 8:12 ESV

“And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

2 Corinthians 11:14 ESV

Conclusion

Sometimes the lights we see are not marking safe passage but are intended to mislead us into disaster

Learning to recognize the true light and false lights is essential to life