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Lighthouse Digest subscribers Judith and Charles (Dane) Alden of Pennsylvania have donated several artifacts of the old U.S. Life Saving Service to the new Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
Presented to the museum at last year’s Outer Banks Lighthouse Society annual meeting was a brass signal lamp, a masthead light, a traveler block for a breeches buoy and a pewter plate.
The signal lamp was purchased from Levine Midgette, a retired Coast Guardsman, 35 years ago. He said they were a rare find even then. He should know. Alden, now 70, served 35 years with the Coast Guard Auxiliary, twenty-one of those years with the national staff in Washington, DC. He and his wife have been collecting maritime artifacts since they got married in 1951. Over the past several years they have been donating those artifacts including a major donation two years ago of a harbor entrance light and a channel marker light to the Shore Village Lighthouse Museum in Rockland, Maine.
The signal lamp was carried by Midgette on beach patrol as did his father and grandfather before him. It was used to signal ships in distress as well as other USLSS surfmen.
Midgette had originally salvaged the masthead lamp from the wreck of the Barkentine Vlythia, which had run aground near Corolla, NC in the 1880’s.
The Alden’s have always held a great interest in maritime history and hold membership in a variety of groups including the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society and the American Lighthouse Foundation.
This story appeared in the February 2001 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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