In 1869, a 21-year-old Rhode Island woman named Ida Lewis rowed a boat through a snow storm in the middle of the night. The choppy waves didn’t stop her from pulling drowning sailors out of the black water, and rowing them back to shore. On that day, she became a nationally recognized hero. However, she had already spent her entire life saving people’s lives and being an undercover female “keeper of the light” on Lime Rock Island.
As a Teen, Ida Lewis Had To Take Her Father’s Job
Ida Lewis’ father was a man named Captain Hosea Lewis. After years of working as a sea captain on a boat, he joined The Lighthouse Service earned the honorable position as a “Keeper of the Light”. Back in the 1800’s, lighthouses had huge glass bulbs made with reflective mirrors. Oil lamps needed to be lit all night. Every few hours, the wick would have to be cut and placed into the oil lamp, and the light would illuminate the rocks at the coast line. This prevented ships from getting too close to the shore and crashing in the middle of the night. The light needed to be illuminated all night, every night, so the nocturnal keeper would have to stay awake. This was an important job with a huge amount of responsibility, because missing even one night of lighting the oil lamps could mean that an entire ship full of men would die.
In 1857, Captain Lewis got a job as a lighthouse keeper, and moved his wife and four children to live on Lime Rock Island off the coast of Rhode Island. This was a small, rocky piece of land with a house sitting on it, and it was only accessible by boat. Ida Lewis was just 15 years old at the time, and she was his oldest child in the family. Shockingly, just four months after moving to the island to start their new life, Captain Lewis had a stroke.
Captain Lewis became permanently disabled after his stroke. This was years before modern physical therapy, and since they had to row on a boat to leave the island, it wasn’t easy to transport him to a hospital, either. His wife had to tend to his needs full-time as well as take care of her three younger children while Ida took over the duties of the keeper of the light. At just 15 years old, she had to drop out of school and take on the responsibility of people’s lives. She stayed awake all night long and made sure the oil light was always lit, staring out to the sea for any oncoming ships.
Ida Lewis would stay up through the night. At sunrise, her younger siblings would wake up to get ready for school. She rowed a boat with the kids to school, and dropped them off before returning home. She would sleep, and then picked them up when school was over. Over the years of rowing her siblings to school every single day, her arms became very strong.
Before moving to the island, her father taught her how to swim at a very young age. When she was only 12, she saved a group of men who capsized their boat and did not know how to swim. This would not be the last time that Ida Lewis saved lives. As the keeper of the light, she spent the rest of her life rescuing men out at sea.