See and support the lightship in Lightship

The drawings in Lightship are based largely on LV-87, also known as the Ambrose lightship, currently docked at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City. Lightship maintenance doesn't come cheap, though; you can support the preservation of the Ambrose by making a donation through the museum's web site, here.

Visit the U.S.C.G. Lightship Sailors' Museum Exhibit

The U. S. Coast Guard Lightship Sailors Association is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving existing lightships, the history of lightships, and the stories of lightship sailors. The L.S.A.'s collection of historical objects and documents is on display at the Coast Guard Heritage Museum at Barnstable Village on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. General information about the museum is here, and information about the L.S.A. exhibit is here.

Read more about lightships

You can read about lightships in general at the U.S. Coast Guard's web site, and about the lightships of Nantucket Sound at this website maintained by Harwich, MA, harbormaster Tom Leach.

Build a lightship

If you have more patience than I do you can build a paper model of the Ambrose lightship by following these free plans. Note: The larger you make the plans, the easier it will be to build the ship. Heavy paper wouldn't hurt, either, and neither would a zen outlook.

There are lightships afloat and open to visitors in California, Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington. Climb the gangplank, walk the decks, peer through the portholes, and imagine months on board.

(Please call and confirm before you go. Information changes, plus anybody can make a typo.)

Seattle, Washington: Lightship Vessel 83, or LV-83, for short, which formerly served as the San Francisco lightship, the Swiftsure lightship, and as a Relief lightship, is docked at the Northwest Seaport.

New York, New York: LV-87, which marked the Ambrose Channel into New York Harbor, the Scotland station off the New Jersey coast (where the wreck of the SS Scotland once posed a threat to other ships), and the Vineyard Sound, is docked now at the South Street Seaport Museum. Visitors to the Museum can climb aboard and look around. LV-87 is the model for the ship in Lightship.

Portsmouth, Virginia: LV-101, which served off Cape Charles, Virginia; as a Relief ship; at the Overfalls station off of Delaware; and at Stonehorse Shoal in Massachusetts, is today painted as the Portsmouth lightship and can be visited at the Portsmouth Lightship Museum in Portsmouth, Virginia. (In fact, there never was a Portsmouth lightship station, but don’t let that interfere with your visit.)

Port Huron, Michigan: LV-103, the Huron lightship, can be visited at the Port Huron Museum.
 
Jersey City, New Jersey: LV-107, which served off the shores of North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and New Jersey, is now used as office space for the Liberty Landing Marina. I don’t know if you can visit it or not, but it’s there.

Oyster Bay, Long Island: A former Nantucket lightship, LV-112, is docked at Oyster Bay, Long Island, where she was for a while awaiting completion of National Lighthouse Museum on Staten Island, New York. But — the new museum is behind schedule, and in the meantime the general obscurity of lightships has not served LV-112 well in her current home. She’s yours for $1.00 in fact, if you’ve got a place to put her. (UPDATE: Good news! LV-112 in now in Boston, Massachusetts, with restoration underway. Read more, including information about visiting, here.)

(Formerly) New Bedford, Massachusetts: LV-114 served as the Portland, Pollock, and Diamond Shoals lightship. Until the summer of 2007 she was labeled New Bedford and moored in that city, which had owned her since 1971. After years of promising a renovation — while at the same time instead allowing steady deterioration and vandalism — the city stripped the ship of items of historical significance and in December, 2006, put her up for auction on eBay. That didn’t work, and in June, 2007, New Bedford negotiated to sell the ship to a firm which planned to convert the ship to scrap metal. By the end of the month she was in pieces.

New York, New York: LV-115, the Frying Pan lightship served at the Frying Pan Shoals off North Carolina and is now docked at Pier 66a (at 26th Street) in the Hudson River, where it does duty as a bar.

Baltimore, Maryland: LV-116, which served on the Chesapeake and Delaware stations (and which I had the pleasure of touring while working on the book LIGHTSHIP) is well maintained and open to the public as part of the Baltimore Maritime Museum. She is docked at Pier 3 in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Lewes, Delaware: LV-118 served on the Boston, Cornfield, and Cross Rip stations but today is painted as the Overfalls lightship. She is currently being actively and beautifully restored by the Overfalls Maritime Museum Foundation.

Astoria, Oregon: Lightship WAL-604 served at the mouth of the Columbia River off the coast of Oregon. She’s in fine shape and open to visitors as part of the Columbia River Maritime Museum.

Oakland, California: WAL-605 served at the Overfalls station off of Delaware, then at Blunt's Reef off the coast of California, before being used as a Relief ship all along the West Coast. She is now docked and maintained at Jack London Square in Oakland by the United States Lighthouse Society, who have given her a remarkable restoration.

At sea: A former Nantucket lightship, WLV 612, has been converted into a private yacht (!), complete with large screen plasma TV and other things undreamt of by lightship sailors. The ship is available for weekly and event charters, if you have the means.

Brooklyn, New York: And, finally, there is LV-84, a former Relief lightship. This ship was purchased by private owners with a renovation in mind, but while docked off the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn the ship was allowed to deteriorate, until it sank. (The story — or parts of it — made the New York Times, here.) Now only the ship's masts poke out from under the water. You can see them there, too: Google Richards Street Brooklyn NY. Follow Richards to the water, where it turns into a pier. Click Satellite view, zoom in, and look for the two thin white masts in the water by the pier. That's LV-84! And there are other lightships that have been even less lucky. Remember that a donation to one of the above museums or to the U. S. Coast Guard Lightship Sailors Association helps prevent this sort of thing. Don't let this happen to a lightship that you know.