We cut off the cabin and converted it into a barge to haul heavy materials out to Graves, says Waller, referring to the historic lighthouse he owns. Sign up today. By 13 he was a paper boy, and on Saturday mornings he helped his. During the 28 years that he's lived on Tremont Street, Bobby Sager said he loved to hear the sounds of the bell at Park Street Church. The light, which is powered by solar batteries, will still flash, and the Coast Guard will come by every once in a while to check on it. The dory was leaking so badly, that one man had to bale while the other manned the oars. The flashes within a group were two seconds apart, while the groups of flashes were separated by five seconds of darkness. He was promoted to first assistant with a $20 increase in salary in 1886, and received another $10 in 1888, before being promoted that year to head keeper at $760 per annum. We made kites and flew them anytime, as there was always a breeze coming off the ocean.. People named Bobby Sager. Though the government has the right to reject all bids if it believes a fair market price has not been achieved, the $78,000 bid was approved a few weeks after the auction closed, and the lighthouse was awarded to Arthur Girard a real estate developer from Portland, Maine. The General Services Administration, which likes to call itself The Nations Landlord, is in charge of selling off any federal property thats deemed irrelevant. In addition to the two dwellings, one of which was fashioned out of an old barn, the inshore station also featured a storehouse, boathouse, and a blacksmiths shop. I barely know how to read a nautical chart (although there is an app for that), and sometimes, even though its irrational, that feels like a loss. Growing up in Malden, a blue-collar suburb in northern Boston, Bobby Sager began his education in making money early in life. Ruth Abbott Carley, who met Gordon B. Kenny at the USO on Boston Common and was dating the coastguardsman while he was stationed at Boon Island Lighthouse in 1951 to 1952, kindly provided the images embedded in this paragraph. Keeper Williams and his assistants saved the six crewmembers, though afterward, the keepers and the crew were almost equally incapacitated by exposure. In 1919, Keeper Harry Smith and his two assistants rescued seven men aboard the schooner Hazel E. Ritcey, after it struck a rock and sank near the island. 4th Lives in Montgomery, Texas. Hes says hes planning to open it up for occasional tours, and that the response has been really good. The original 1905 iron ladder, corroded in aqua that matches the sea, runs from the granite under my feet from sea level up a tight parallel against the side of his 113-foot lighthouse. The Lighthouse Establishment heard and responded. The wind reached nearly 100 miles per hour and stirred up waves that dashed against the dwelling and tower, coating them in thick layers of ice. Lighthouse is best seen by boat, but a distant view is possible from Cape Neddick Some of the people purchasing auctioned lighthouses feel the same as me, and theyre buying them to save them. Hes arguably made it better. Among the federal detritus, lighthouses are a special case. [1] Early life[ edit] Sager was raised in Malden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. display: none; Nepal. Indeed life inside the lighthouse did prove precarious. We have come to Graves Light Station on a good day. 5.25 In my winter gloves, treadless rubber boots, ski pants, and a life jacket, I climb, pausing on each step to prevent my forearms from seizing up in the cold. The reasoning was that the legs would offer almost no resistance to the wind and water. But for an increasing number of individuals, nonprofits, and municipalities, the upkeep of the aging and often remote towers seems practically impossible against rising seas and ruthless corrosion. The lighthouse is a three-story cast iron square structure, 45 feet in height, that rests on a cylindrical tower. After three years spent cutting the rock to form a foundation, the first six courses of the lighthouse were laid, dovetailed, and dowelled together in 1858. William C. Williams signed on as second assistant on August 5, 1885, earning $450 annually. No. Perhaps its best that the lighthouse has been left for the ghosts to inhabit in solitude. The keepers quarters, fog bell, and a replica of the lantern room He amassed 13 units in a luxury Boston high-rise to create for himself a spacious, highly individualized home occupying three floors. What kind of a guy, Fine. #ada-button-frame { Were all here for such a short time. Plans for original Minots Ledge Lighthouse, Granite blocks being assembled at Cohasset in 1857, Base of tower as it appeared on July 1, 1859, two double-dwellings were built at Cohasset, Memorial plaque ready for lowering to seafloor. an immediate left onto Government Island where you will see the lantern room replica. As one keeper here recently said, I thought all one had to know how to do out here was to clean, paint, and polish brass, but I have found out that one has to be doctor, painter, steeplejack, glazier, boatman, gasoline engineer, electrician, stonecutter and even a cook when the women folks leave us in the fall., Miriam (Dolby) Hammel, wife of a coastguardsman stationed on the island during World War II to watch for German U-boats, had fonder memories of Boon Island. Shoals, Reefs, Harbor Lights, Islands in Rivers and Harbors. I dont have to fill in all the boxes before I decide to do something, for better or worse.. On January 26, 1839, the Grovers were forced to retreat to the Light House as a place of safety as the sea broke into the porch, unhung the doors and forced the door of the dwelling house and entered the lower rooms, causing considerable damage. The Grovers had faced a similar situation on October 31, 1829 as recorded in the keepers logbook. Following two shipwrecks in 1810, a twenty-five-foot tall tower topped by an octagonal lantern was constructed at a cost of $2,377 along with a stone keepers house for $150. The lighthouse is privately owned. I think thats what attracted me to Graves and to other things in my life. Asked Navy to reimburse us for their food; Navy refused. The Germans had been spies mapping the harbor in World War I. During the early 1930s, Fred Batty was an assistant keeper at Boon Island. In 2000, the GSA, the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior passed The National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, an amendment to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Their goal? The fact that it no longer belongs to the public that its owned by an individual who can turn it into a vacation house or tear it down feels like a transgression. Grover was cleared in court, but the accusations, and other difficulties, would continue. Robert Sager is an American philanthropist and photographer, best known for founding the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow, a charitable organization. Three years later, Hanna left and was replaced by Eliphalet Grover. I want to live the fullest possible life.. Sometime after this, the light was dubbed the I-LOVE-YOU light do to its unique 1-4-3 flash pattern. With . On August 22, 1860, the towers second-order Fresnel lens was test lighted, but the formal establishment of the light did not occur until November 15, 1960, when Minots Ledge Lightship was withdrawn. From the top deck of Graves tower, Waller points two miles south to Little Brewster Island, home only to Boston Light, the first lighthouse in the United States, built in 1716. The second, David Oliver, accepted, but left without notice to work aboard a ship after the government refused his salary request. Tower closed. Breakwaters, River Lights, Channel, Small Islands in Sounds. Grover was still keeper in 1837, earning $600 per year, and his letter-writing enemies continued their assault, branding him a profane man, uncivil to those who visit the island and alleging that he lived in great intimacy with his wifes sister (while apparently estranged from his ailing wife). Sager has been taking photos of youngsters from war-torn countries for several years now, as he and his family have traveled the world practicing what he calls "eyeball-to-eyeball philanthropy.". Instead, Swift proposed a radical new design consisting of nine, sixty-foot-long iron pilings cemented five feet into the submerged rock, atop which would perch the lantern and keepers dwelling. I get the lighthouse obsession from both sides. through Cohasset for just under three miles to Summer Street. Eva recalls, Sometimes I played alone on the rocks, and when there were a lot of seals, Id make believe that was my army. She spent a summer visiting lights along the eastern seaboard. With no takers and erosion at its base, the 86-foot Kauhola Point Lighthouse in Hawaii was demolished altogether in 2009. At the mooring a few hundred feet out from the station, we hop into the dinghy, his sixththe sea took all the othersand from the stern I look at Waller, 59, in his thick-rimmed black and gray specs under a matching beanie rolled above his ears, rowing in galoshes and yellow waterproof fishing suspenders. The 2000 National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act was established to maintain these historic structures, saving many, including Graves. I only help people who help themselves., Hes courted controversy, once sending a supportive email to a top adviser of Syrias dictator before candidly acknowledging I was certainly wrong.. When we have high tides with big storms, we actually become two islands. The damage has limited public access in recent years, and at the bottom of the cliff below the lighthouse, rock-filled cages, used as protection from erosion until they were ripped out of the ground in 2018 by a storm, roll around like tumbleweedsmaking the future of Boston Light even more ominous. A Notice of Availability, dated June 30, 2009, announced that Minots Ledge Lighthouse, deemed excess by the Coast Guard, was being offered at no cost to eligible entities, including federal, state, and local agencies, non-profit corporations, and educational organizations under the provisions of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000. At the time it was the most anyone had paid for a lighthouse. The next day, the family gave thanks to the Creator for remembering them. That lighthouse is part of our narrative, and I dont think were the only weirdos who put emotional weight on places. Donovan (1895), Charles G. Everett (1895 1905), Ernest H. Small (1905 1909), Vivian A. Currier (1909 1910), Eugene N. Larsen (1910 1911), Fred M. Pease (1911 at least 1912), Percy A. Evans (at least 1939 1940). The lights base, an almost invisible outcropping of rocks off Cohasset, Massachusetts, has plagued mariners for more years than the light has protected them. Eventually, they will probably divest of almost every lighthouse property, with a few exceptions., DEntremont predicts that in 50 years only a small number of lighthouses, if any, will still be used for any navigation. Minots was constructed to replace an earlier light, which was swept away in a storm. Lives in Kenbridge, Virginia. Find your friends on Facebook. Lets talk about something more serious, more substantial, suggested Sager, 62, sporting a gray T-shirt, dark slacks, and stocking feet. He says no. The underside for the placement of the fresnel lens, Graves Light. Brides (1939 1940), Percy A. Evans (1940 1942). He also envisions it as a place where representatives of societies that wage war against each other, that commit unspeakable atrocities, can sit across from each other and find common ground. Last year, in Boston Harbor, just north of Scituate, Dave Waller bought Graves Island Light, which is a direct design copy of Minots, for $933,888. I have been hear 13 years and 4 months 28 days and never see such a time before. The 59-foot Cape Blanco Lighthouse, built in 1870 and the oldest lighthouse still standing in Oregon, offers tours into the workroom only and allows visitors onto the grounds. Snowman is the only female in history among the 69 others to keep Boston Light. Although the area is no longer populated by Indians who believe in the evil spirit of Hobomock, for years tales have abounded of strange moaning, tapping, and even mysterious polishing of the lens by ghostly hands. Part of that is nostalgia. It says a lot about Dave Waller that he and Bobby Sager have worked out an agreement, making Sager a partner in the Graves Light project. Ruth doesnt recall many stories from Gordons service on the island, but she does remember that the difficulty in accessing the island with the stations boat delayed his coming to visit her in Boston on more than one occasion! For Waller, who owns a special effects company in Boston, restoring the lighthouse and its artifacts is a continuum of problem-solving. Lewis, who submitted a report in 1842 detailing the more than forty vessels that had met their end in the previous decade as a result of the ledge. On October 13th, Bobby Sager, Polaroids chairman, won the auction and bought the lighthouse for $222,000. High above them, Minot Lights signature 1-4-3 beacon will spread its simple message across the sea: I love you. Until construction of the new dwelling was completed in 1905, animosity festered, as was noted in a letter by First Assistant Charles W. Torry, charging the Keeper of that station with neglect of duty, in not properly keeping an account of oil expended at the station, and a waste of the Government property in throwing surplus oil away in order to make his account of expenditures tally. Apparently, no disciplinary action was taken against Keeper Williams; but Torry soon found himself unemployed. The Coast Guard, once mandated by Congress to staff and operate Boston Light permanently, has greenlit a search for a new owner through the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. Fanad Lighthouse is a historic working lighthouse at the mouth of Lough Swilly, Ireland, that offers overnight stays. Saugerties Lighthouse on the Hudson River, in upstate New York, offers overnight accommodation. I feel irrationally possessive of Minots light, even though Ive never been in the tower. Rwanda. A crew of Portuguese fishermen swore they saw a figure hanging on to an outer ladder shouting at them in their own language to keep away, and many local fishermen have reported hearing moans and cries for help coming from the base of the lighthouse. You realize they had it all figured out long ago, says Waller, now a pro at finding the right tools and the right people. 1 They try to put them in the hands of groups that will keep them open to the public, but sometimes, like in Minots case, no public entity wants the responsibility. The local brewery makes a Minot Light, Thoreau wrote about it, and its been used in ads for Cape Cod Cranberries and American Tobacco cigarettes. As early as 1695, a schooner crashed on those treacherous rocks and sank, leaving no survivors. In 1910, a keeper named Elliot Hadley described the conditions he saw during a storm: Ive looked up at solid water rushing in toward the ledges. Add climate change to the mix, and were going to lose a significant number of lighthouses in the coming decades. In 2013, the Kittery Historical and Naval Museum announced it was having difficulty paying the premium on the $800,000 insurance policy for the Boon Island lens. On a windy January afternoon, our boat covers the nine miles from Boston Harbor Shipyard & Marina to its offshore mooring in a swift 35 minutes, plunging five feet down and back up over waves that look like rolling hills in Vermont. Keeper Per S. Tornberg, who was in charge of the lighthouse from 1924 to 1936, had an even closer brush with death. Think not that I will ever flinch from my post, though the waves should gain the mastery for which they are so incessantly striving. Every year storms seem to do more damage. The glacier land (called drumlins) under both the tower and the keepers house, where Snowman, 71, lived half the year for almost 20 years maintaining the place and giving tours, is shrinking. Find the closest hotels to Boon Island Lighthouse, Select a photograph to view a photo gallery, Boon Island, a tiny outcropping of granite, only two football fields long and fourteen feet above sea level at its highest point, is located six-and-a-half miles off Maines southern coast. God bless you all. The body of Joseph Antoine washed ashore later at Nantasket. I was thinking of that recently as I sat on a South Shore beach, listening to excitement rise in Joe Castigliones radio voice as a home-team fly ball cleared the bullpen wall at Fenway. See Sarah Sager's age, phone number, house address, email address, social media accounts, public records, and check for criminal records on Spokeo. The first light of dawn revealed only the bent remains of a few pilings. In 2014, Polaroid Chairman "Bobby" Sager won the bid for Minot's Ledge . In the case of the lens built for Minots Ledge, the number 143 was produced by eight flash panels that created three groups of flashes: the first showing one flash, the next four flashes, and the last three flashes. Sitting at a table just steps away from where Hillary Clinton recently appeared at a fundraiser, Sager said hes driven by a counterintuitive impulse: a kind of altruistic selfishness. Undaunted, Captain Alexander began anew. Pakistan. At night wed take beers out to the back porch and count the pulses from the light, picking out which ones said love and which ones said you.. 1,985 Pier or Breakwater Lights in Harbors. until it becomes Main Street. Captain F.A. Free shipping for many products! See list below of other lighthouses that allow tours and lodging. His own piece of the Big Bang sits near the Harley-Davidson motorcycle that music legend Sting gave him as a gift, not far from a bathroom ripped from a Boeing 747 and reconstructed high above Tremont Street. Crossing back over the bridge, we make our way up: five spiral clangy metal flights; past a bunk room, the keepers quarters, and a third-floor kitchen; and to the lantern room. I havent looked at my phone since we left. William H. Swift, the builder of the lighthouse, felt compelled to respond to the published reports with a letter to the editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser. Rocks weighing fifteen tons or more were moved twenty feet, and two outbuildings were swept away. After crossing the bridge, take . [4] 6 Flannan Isles Lighthouse Scotland Owner/site manager: private. Among other things, the lighthouse needs to be repointed and sealed up. Only three months into his tenure as keeper, sitting in the living quarters atop the tower and supposedly out of reach of the waves, Isaac Dunham wrote The wind E. blowing very hard with an ugly sea which makes the light reel like a Drunken ManI hope God will in mercy still the raging seaor we must perishGod only knows what the end will be. By October 1850, Dunham quit, and John Bennett took his place, only to despair soon afterwards at his perilous situation in storms. Bobby has created an easy way for those that would like to make a difference and a way for anyone to send a Hope Soccer Ball to underprivileged children. To have the waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eyeing you always, night and day, and from time to time making a spring at you, almost sure to have you at last.. 3 south from Boston, to Route 228. Second Assistant: Samuel Tobey (1855 1856), Josiah Tobey Jr. (1856 1859), John S. Baker (1859), Enos Gray (1859 1861), S. Tobey (1861 1864), George E. Bridges (1864 1865), Charles Ramsdell (1865 1868), Samuel R. McLorn (1868), Luther Amazeen (1868 1870), Nathan White, Jr. (1870 1874), Edwin J. Hobbs (1874 1876), David R. Grogan (1876 1878), George O. Leavitt (1878 1880), Paschal Fernald (1880 1881), Orrin M. Lamprey (1881 1885), William C. Williams (1885 1886), James Burke (1886 1888), Leonidas H. Sawyer (1888 1890), Charles W. Torry (1890), Walter S. Amee (1891 1893), William M. Brooks (1893), Alvah J. Toby (1893 1894), James Hawe (1894), Joseph A. Pruett (1894 1896), Charles S. Williams (1896 1897), Meshach M. Seaward (1897 1900), Merton E. Tolman (1900), Henry C. Neal (1900 1902), Frank L. Peabbles (1902), Leroy L. Myers (1902), James R. Faulkingham (1902 1903), William T. Stevens (1903 1904), Mitchell Blackwood (1905), William Henry Burns (1905 1907), Charles Whitten Allen (1907 1911), Fuller E. Larrabee (1912 1913), Charles A. Radley (1913), Albert Staples (1914 at least 1915), Roscoe M. Chandler (1916 1917), Harry M. Kelley (1917 1919), George E. Woodward (1919 1920), Arthur E. Ginn (at least 1921), Eugene L. Coleman (1923 1924), Myron L. Wilson (1924 1925), Andrew H. Kennedy (1925 1928), Fred C. Batty (1930), Frank M. Rumery (1930 ), Howard W. Gray (1932 1934), Hoyt P. Smith (1935 1936), Harry H. McClure (1936 1937), Henry S. Brown (1937 at least 1941), Calvin Dolby (1944 1945), Russell G. Carpenter (at least 1945), Clifford Gustavson (at least 1947), Charles Kendrick Capon (1951 1953), Harold L. Roberts (1956), Ron Schultz (1959). I had read that the government had auctioned it off in 2014 and I tracked down the new owner at his sprawling apartment suite overlooking Boston Common. The Coast Guard has already divested the vast majority of offshore lighthouses, says DEntremont. To find the money, he and his wife mortgaged their house, as did his mom, to help them out. Head: Benjamin Wane (1811), David Oliver (1811 1812), Thomas Hanna (1812 1816), Eliphalet Grover (1816 1839), Joseph P. Junkins (1839 1840), Mark Dennet (1840 1841), John S. Thompson (1841 1843), John Kennard (1843 1844), Isidore S. Thompson (1844), John Kennard (1844 1846), Nathaniel Baker (1846 1849), John S. Thompson (1849 1853), Hiram Tobey (1853), Caleb L. Goold (1853 1854), George Bowden (1854 1855), Josiah Tobey (1855 1859), Nathaniel Baker (1859), Joseph H. Hart (1859 1861), George B. Wallace (1861), Benjamin Bridges (1861 1864), R.C. The new owner is Bobby Sager, a lighthouse enthusiast and philanthropist with enough assets to fund a thorough restoration of the tower. Hes rechinked the granite blocks to make it watertight, and put in running water and electricity. He plans to knock down one ceiling to combine two floors into one, transforming it into a panoramic conference room sort of a majestic aquatic meeting space. Turn left on Minots Ledge Lighthouse lost its resident keepers in 1947, when the light was electrified and automated. Summer Street and then right on Border Street. Next summer Waller, who has been awarded by the American Lighthouse Foundation for his work in preservation, will finally finish the near unimaginable with the installation of a rare antique first-order Fresnel lens with the refracting glass once commonly used to intensify light for mariners. At the cost of your own life, you would keep that light lit, says Waller. Shad Sager Overview Shad Gary Sager has been associated with one company, according to public records. I ask Waller if he ever imagines himself as one of the lightkeepers. Some time around 1a.m. The other occupants of the island at the time were Head Keeper Williams and his wife, and S. H. Sawyer, who was filling in for Assistant Keeper Seaward, who was ashore taking care of his wife. In 1890, the stations cracked 1,200-pound bell was recast and placed atop a newly completed stone and brick oil house that measured sixteen by fourteen feet. But when you own a lighthouse, the repairs are never really done. At our return to the house found all our water gone and all my turnips and cabage washt away and my walls all Down. 26.25 Two days later a Gloucester fisherman found a bottle containing a final message from the doomed keepers: The beacon cannot last any longer. When a whale went by, spouting, Id make believe that was my submarine. And Harold Hutchins daughter Shirley Kelley said: As a kid, it was my idea of Paradise! Largest Seacoast Lights. Sager is now fixing up two more lighthouses (Minot's Ledge Light south of Boston and Maine's Boon Island Light) he landed at auction when they were offloaded by the Coast Guard. Comparative Table of Lens Orders Thomas Point Lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay, built in 1875 , still in its original location, and still used as a navigational beacon, offers seasonal tours by boat from Annapolis, Maryland. Hanna soon realized the sum was insufficient and requested $450 annually. Waller on the bridge between structures, on the lighthouse acreage. (See this video of the Gay Head rescue.). As a kid, he sailed by it in his dads boat. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff Graves Light sits on a rocky ledge in the middle of Boston Harbor, surrounded by water. On the third day of the expedition, remnants of iron beams, believed to be support legs for the fallen lighthouse, were located with the assistance of a remote-operated vehicle. which houses part of a third-order Fresnel lens used in the lighthouse can be seen at Government Island in Cohasset. When I reach Snowman at her home base in the Boston suburb of Weymouth, she tells me, Were seeing the most erosion down in the valley in between them. Some have been preserved by gigantic efforts: Already Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, the tallest lighthouse in the country at 193 feet, and Gay Head Light on Marthas Vineyard, among others, have been physically moved back from the edge of the sea, a painstaking process involving digging up the foundation and rolling it inland on hydraulic beams. Many link the name Boon Island to the wrecks of the trading vessel. At the bridge, I can finally move laterally, my soles sinking into the planks, and I tell Waller, with only 13 feet left, I dont like heights. We cross the bridge to the former oil room he turned into a guest house. He asserted that the area was annually the scene of the most heart-rending disasters. Lewis concluded his report on Minots Ledge with the following: A light-house on this reef is more required than on any part of the seaboard of New England. The fires inside the dwelling went out after the chimneys became capped with ice. Lighthouses across the country are crumbling amid worsening storms and dwindling funds. 3,530 3.15 See Photos. Use As a seven year old, Moise was a soldier in the Congo. Even before the White Man saw his ships wrecked in those waters, Indians had lived in awe of the evil spirit Hobomock, who dwelt beneath the rocks and unleashed violent storms. Several keepers were convinced that the ghosts of the two doomed assistant keepers still resided in the lighthouse, sending signals to each other, cleaning the lens, and warning others of the dangers presented by Minots Ledge. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. (Photos courtesy of Dave Waller) The lighthouse is privately owned. During 1842, civil engineer I.W.P. Midway up the steep tower sits a bridge that he rebuilt last summer, an exact copy of the original from 1905, but raised up 27 feet, hoping that this one will withstand storm waves that get wilder every year. This lens was one of two lenses, built using the Mahan system, that were displayed at the Columbian Exposition held at Chicago in 1893. from Minot. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for INVISIBLE SUN BOBBY SAGER RIZZOLI NEW YORK SIGNED BOOK RARE at the best online prices at eBay! At this time, the second-order lens was dismantled and placed in storage in the tower, and a third-order Fresnel lens was installed. Rather than let the situation. Tower (1861 1874), Levi L. Creed (1874 1881), Frank F. Martin (1881 1887), Milton Reamy (1887 1915), Octavius H. Reamy (1915 1924), Per F. Tornberg (1924 1936), George H. Fitzpatrick (1936 at least 1941). Image courtesy of The Power of the Invisible Sun, by Bobby Sager.Last week Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, hosted a concert at Carnegie Hall to benefit the Rainforest Fund, the nonprofit they . Turn north on 228, and follow East Street, Im not doing this because I was touched by an angel, or because I feel guilty about making too much money, he said. The sea washd the small rocks from under the Lighthouse and Dwelling house; the island was all under water for 4 hours., On May 10, 1839, the complaints about Keeper Grover must have finally hit their mark, as the keeper wrote in his log: Turnd of[f] of Boon Island after Serving as Lighthouse Keeper 22 years and 10 months and 20 Day Without Cause.. A few years ago, the mooring was ripped out of the ocean floor by a gale, and a breaker dragged Dave Wallers boat, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter he bought used, into the shoal below the lighthouse. Fine. As the iron supports began to snap one by one, the bell was silenced, the beacon was extinguished, and the men were cast into the raging sea. Graves Light, a historic lighthouse in Boston Harbor, is privately owned by David Waller and a partner, Bobby Sager, and under renovation to preserve it.