GENERAL

Date: 29 August 1925.

You may wish to refresh your memory of 1920s history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s

A map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Navassa+Island/@18.4016694,-75.0248209,3989

NAVASSA ISLAND AND ITS LIGHTHOUSE

West of Hispaniola, there is an ancient coral atoll thrust out of the Caribbean by tectonic action; it is called Navassa. The island’s rugose cliffs, accreted by coral polyps, are now slowly undermined by the incessant battering of the waves, which break into voids in the rock and blast out clouds of salty mist. Rain runs through the porous, karstic terrain as through a sieve, leaving no reliable source of fresh water. Thousands of generations of seabirds have nested there, though - the red-footed booby and the magnificent frigatebird among the hardy, wind-sculpted trees topping the upper parts of the island, the cliff swallow on the rugged bluffs. It was only the vast accumulation of their droppings, baked in the tropical sun to a fine grade of guano, which ever drew men to Navassa in any significant numbers.

Until processes for the artificial fixation of nitrogen came into practical use, guano was among the best sources of fertilizer available to agriculture. Despite the inhospitality of Navassa and a competing Haitian claim, a company was formed in Baltimore to exploit it commercially. This venture came to a bad end in 1889, when the Black laborers, brought from Maryland to the isolated island to mine and haul guano under the tropical sun for eight or ten dollars a month, revolted and murdered five foremen with axes. The Navy hauled them back for trial, but such was the popular outrage at the conditions of virtual slavery under which the men had been kept that President Harrison spared them from the gallows. The Spanish-American War brought an end to hopes of restarting full-scale production under improved conditions even before chemical engineering had made the island’s resources definitively obsolete.

However, Navassa became relevant to commerce once again with the opening of the Panama Canal: its surrounding shallows and reefs were a menace to shipping. The need for a lighthouse was realized in advance of the canal’s completion, but owing to the expenses of the Great War and the lack of any seagoing lighthouse tender in the ninth district of the lighthouse service, nothing was built there until 1917, when a light was finally erected to warn mariners away. The light was surely among the finest in the contemporary lighthouse service: a modern aid to navigation atop an exceptionally rugged reinforced concrete tower, the tallest such structure built at the time, able to withstand West Indian hurricanes. With ten well-ventilated individual bedrooms and two kitchens arranged around an inner courtyard, the associated quarters were pleasant enough. In spite of these advantages, though, the isolation and remoteness of the posting made it undesirable to many prospective lightkeepers.

To be sure, it was not unusual for lighthouses in remote or offshore locations to rely on the regular visits of a lighthouse tender ship for supplies and communication, but in the case of the Navassa Island light, the tender would have to undertake an ocean journey of two days each way from the ninth lighthouse district’s base of operations in San Juan. This was four hundred and fifty miles away, incurring costs that struck fear into the fiscal hearts of the notoriously frugal lighthouse service. Accordingly, such journeys were made as infrequently as practicable, with the tender steaming out to Navassa but two or three times a year with fuel, provisions, and relief lightkeepers.

YOUR LIGHTHOUSE TENDER, USLHT ''MAGA''

You come to Navassa aboard the USLHT Maga, either as a lighthouse keeper, a family member of a keeper, or one of the officers and crew of the Maga. Like the (historical) sister ships of its class, USLHT Lilac and USLHT Columbine, the ship was built in the 1890s and is about 46 meters long and 8 meters wide, drawing about 450 cm of water and powered by a pair of coal-fired Scotch marine boilers. It has a complement of around 25 sailors and at this time is also carrying the inspector of the ninth district, the relief lightkeepers, and the relief lightkeepers’ families.

RESOURCES OF THE ''MAGA''

The Maga carries three boats, a 7.5-meter steam-powered launch intended to transport cargo to the lighthouse and a pair of 4-meter rowed dinghies which can also serve as lifeboats. Forward, there is a sturdy crane. Besides the usual purpose in loading and unloading cargo, it is useful for retrieving and placing buoys (a task that occupies much of its time in the ninth district), for making deliveries to some lights, and for the construction of navigational aids. The crane has a steam-powered winch. The Maga has a radiotelegraph, with which it can communicate with the lighthouse district in San Juan. The Maga has an electric turbine generator, providing power for incandescent lights and the radio.

THE OFFICERS AND CREW

Many of the people below are not well defined (or even named) below in deference to players wishing to have more creative input on their characters.

The italicized positions are reserved to NPCs. Note that some degree of coordination will be required with other players, e.g. lighthouse service regulations (and common sense) forbid all of the officers of the engineering department from leaving the ship at the same time, so not every player can be an engineer.

There are also aboard four relief lightkeepers and their families if any. At least the ongoing chief lightkeeper is a married man with children. Other lightkeepers may be single or married at the discretion of the player if they or their spouse is chosen as a player character.

The 1920s in general were not a good time for racial or gender equality. However, the lighthouse service does not appear to have been particularly bad in this area, so there is no need for every character to be a White, Anglo man. The lighthouse service sometimes employed female lightkeepers. Most were the spouses of male lightkeepers or were in charge of single-keeper stations. Especially in the ninth district, based in Puerto Rico, many members of the lighthouse service (both keepers and those on ships) were Hispanic. I found at least two Chinese crewmen listed on West-coast tenders, and saw a number of Black crewmen and at least one dark-skinned officer on historical photos of tenders. Immigrants were well-represented on ships and sometimes as keepers.

EQUIPMENT FOR CHARACTERS

Lightkeepers and their families will have the ordinary sorts of domestic items one would expect for those expecting to spend some months apart from civilization, broadly similar to the items used by other rural Americans of the era. The principal lightkeeper was, in the lighthouse service, considered equivalent in stature to the master of a tender, and was provided with similar compensation.

There is a very interesting window into what sorts of things were brought aboard lighthouse tenders: we have records of compensation made by the government for the loss of these items when a tender sank. Besides numerous claims for ordinary clothing, suits, uniforms and toilet articles, compensation was made for clocks, a four-dollar meerschaum pipe, a telescope, carpentry tools, a “talking machine,” violins, a “pocket electric lamp,” and a shotgun - the inspector of the district endorsed the claim for the ruined firearm, considering its possession by a crewman “entirely proper.” In many cases, crewmen had sets of books from the International Correspondence School. Junior officers studied engineering or maritime practice from textbooks. Some practically lived on the tender, and kept all their worldly possessions aboard. One coal passer claimed more losses than almost anyone else on his ship, mostly in fancy clothes - he is now immortalized in history by his captain’s note attesting to the veracity of the claim and explaining that the claimant was “considered something of a dude [i.e. a dandy] by his shipmates.”