See and support the lightship in Lightship

The drawings in Lightship are based largely on LV-87, also known as the Ambrose lightship, currently on display at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City. Supporting the Museum is a great way to help preserve the Ambrose and the other artifacts in the Museum collection for future generations. You can support the Ambrose specifically through the Museum's Adopt-A-Ship campaign. More information is here.

Start a lightship museum

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. Plans are underway for a Lightship Sailors Museum. Donations toward the new museum would be greatly appreciated and can be sent to:

Fred Pelger
LSA Treasurer
1107 East Saquaro Drive
Globe, AZ 85501

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. A suggestion: 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 lot of patience and a zen outlook toward life.

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.

(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 but 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. Photos of the black deed are up on this Flickr account.

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. And not a sand bar, either.

Baltimore, Maryland: LV-116, which served on the Chesapeake and Delaware stations, and which I visited 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. Now only its 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.