became known as the Cross Rip Lightship. The Nantucket
South Shoals off the island’s southeast coast proved hazardous for transatlantic shipping. In some locations, the water can be as shallow as three feet.The shoals were a notorious shipwreck site, so the government stationed a lightship at the South Shoals in 1854. A lightship operated at the South Shoals until 1983 when it was replaced by a large navigation buoy. It was at the time America’s last working lightship. By 1985, new technologies rendered the old lightship program obsolete. Lightships were manned vessels, and many Nantucket men were hired to work on the ones around the island. Some of these men had been whalers from back when Nantucket was the epicenter of the whaling industry. Rough coastal weather made the lightboat service perilous. For example, they had no onboard electricity, and the crew’s only warmth was furnished by manually tending coal-burning stoves — always at risk of breaking loose from
Nantucket LV-1 during a winter storm on Nantucket Shoals station: Life on the New Shoal Lightship
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SPRING 2022
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