On a December night in 1893 a Finnish schooner strikes the Carr Stone, a rock lighthouse off the Yorkshire coast, and one seaman climbs the bronze ladder to the tower door. The principal keeper meets him there with a welcome he repeats three times. Told entirely in the papers put before the inquiry, the lighthouse journal kept in two hands, a young assistant keeper's letter to his wife, and the survivor's own deposition given through an interpreter, the story turns on the house rules of a lighthouse: who may be let in, who keeps the watch, and what the journal's routine entry, light burning well, actually records. Bram Stoker, Simulacrum, writes it in the plain manner of logbook and statement, with the hour set beside every fear.
by Bram Stoker, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium
The papers below were put together for the inquiry into the loss of the schooner Lempi of Rauma on the Carr Stone, off the Yorkshire coast, in December 1893. They are given in the order in which they were read.
Article 9. The Light shall be exhibited from sunset to sunrise. The keeper on watch shall not leave the Lantern while the Light is exhibited, and shall wind the machine as required, that the Light may show its proper character, namely four white flashes in each half minute.
Article 14. The watches shall be kept by the keepers in turn, as set down by the Principal Keeper, and no keeper shall keep two watches in succession except in sickness, or by the written order of the Superintendent.
Article 21. No person shall be admitted to the Tower without the permit of the Board, except persons in distress from the sea, who shall be received, succoured, and entered in the Journal with the hour of their admission.
Article 22. No keeper shall descend to the landing between sunset and sunrise in a gale of wind.
Entries in two hands. Those signed E.R. are by Ezra Rudd, Principal Keeper, nineteen years on the station. Those signed T.G. are by Thomas Gell, Assistant Keeper, seven months on the station. The second Assistant, J. Pennock, was ashore on his month.
12 Dec. 15.38. Light exhibited. Wind N.E., strong, rising. Glass 29.41 and falling. —T.G. 18.00. Watch to P.K. —T.G. 18.00. Relieved A.K. Light burning well. —E.R. 22.00. A.K. called at his hour. P.K. kept on in his place, the A.K. being tired. —E.R.
In a different ink, beneath this, in Gell's hand: I was not tired. —T.G.
13 Dec. 00.00. Light burning well. Wind N.E., whole gale, heavy sea. —E.R. 02.00. Light burning well. —E.R. 02.20. A vessel on the Stone, close under the S.E. side. Called the A.K. —E.R. 02.24. Came up. Saw her lights below. Schooner, two masts, on her beam ends. Heard men. —T.G. 03.05. One man came up the landing ladder and was admitted at the entrance door. Seaman. Admitted by T.G. —T.G.
Rudd has added a line here, in a larger hand: Admitted by the P.K., who said the words. —E.R.
03.10. Voices heard below on the rocks. P.K. forbade descent, Art. 22. —T.G. 03.10. Seals. —E.R. 04.00. Light burning well. The seaman given dry clothes and the A.K.'s bunk. A Finn. Name not got. —E.R. 04.00. Name Antti Halonen, A.B., schooner Lempi of Rauma, Captain Mikkola, eight hands, bound from Sundsvall to London with battens. —T.G. 08.21. Light extinguished. Wind N.E., gale. —T.G. 09.40. One body on the rocks, S.E. side, wedged. Brought up at low water by T.G. and the seaman. The seaman says it is the mate of the schooner, Lindroos. Put in the oil store. No boat can come. —T.G.
Carr Stone Light, Thursday night, 14 Dec. 1893
My dear Ellen,
You will have heard from the coastguard that we had a wreck, and that we are all well, and that is true. I am going to put down the rest in order, because I cannot say it to anyone here, and I think if I write it out by the clock I shall be able to sleep after.
The schooner struck at twenty past two by the P.K.'s entry. I was asleep in the bedroom. It was my watch from ten, but Mr Rudd sent me down at ten and said he would keep on, as he has done three nights out of the last five. You know I do not like to refuse him. I went down. I woke to him shouting up the stair. That is a strange thing, Nell, to hear the P.K. shout up the stair, because the watch is kept up top and the bedroom is below the lantern. I mean that he had come down for me, which he ought not to have done. He was dressed, his boots on, his oilskin on.
When I got to the gallery I could see her lights very plain, close under us on the south-east ledge, the side we call the Shoulder. She was over on her side and the sea was going clean across her. I could hear men calling out. I could not make out the words.
At five minutes past three a man came up the ladder. You know our ladder: the bronze rungs let into the granite, thirty feet of it, from the landing to the entrance door, and the sea was coming up to the tenth rung. I went down the stair to the entrance door and opened it, and the wind took it out of my hand. Mr Rudd came down behind me.
The man got to the top rung and put his hand on the sill. He did not come in. Nell, he hung on the outside of the door with the sea coming up behind him and he looked at us and did not come in.
I put out my hand to him. Mr Rudd took my arm and held it back. He did not step out to the man. He stood in the middle of the doorway with the lamp, quite still, and he spoke as if it were Sunday and the man had called to see the station.
He said, "You are welcome on the Carr. Come in, and stay as long as the sea keeps you."
The man did not move.
Mr Rudd said it again, the same words, smiling. Then he said a third time, "Come in, lad. Come in and stay."
I could not bear it any more and I said, "For God's sake come in, man," and the man came in over the sill on to the floor, and lay there, and Mr Rudd stepped forward as soon as he was over and put his arms round him and lifted him like a child.
That was the admission. I wrote it in the Journal, and he wrote his line under mine, as the Board will see when it comes before them.
After that there were voices on the rocks below us. More than one. I said we must go down. He said Article 22. That is the rule and I knew it, and I did not go. Then he took me out on the gallery on the lee side and said, "Listen to them." I listened. He said, "That's the seals on the Shoulder. They sing like that every winter. Nineteen years I've heard them and I'd not give it up for any music in London." He said it kindly. He was looking at my face to see what I made of it.
The Finn was in my bunk. He was not asleep. He had heard it too.
We found the mate at half past nine, in the gully on the Shoulder, between two rocks, with his hands still shut. The seals do not come up on the Shoulder in a north-east gale. I have been seven months on this station and I know that much.
Since then the P.K. is very good to the Finn. He gives him his own pipe and his own chair and calls him "my guest". He has not once written his name in the Journal. He wanted him to take a watch, and to learn the machine and the burner, "so as to be useful while he is with us". He asked me, very pleasant, whether I would not like to sleep through tonight and let the guest and him keep the light between them.
I said no. I said the guest is not on the books and Article 14 does not allow it. He laughed and said I was a regular clerk. I have arranged it like this. I keep my own watches. The Finn sits up with me in the lantern for mine, and when I go off I take him below with me. We do not leave each other. When Mr Rudd has the watch, I lie in the bedroom with my door open and the Finn in the other bunk, and one of us is awake. We have it in two-hour turns. His name is Antti and he has a little English and some Swedish, and I have none of either, but we have the clock.
The glass is rising. The Superintendent may get out to us on Saturday.
Kiss the children.
Your loving husband, Tom
Taken before the Receiver of Wreck at the Custom House, Whitby, on 20 December 1893. The witness speaking Swedish, Mr Nils Berggren, ship's chandler of this port, interpreted. Some answers were given by the witness in English, and these are taken down as he gave them and marked (E). Taken in shorthand by H. Wardle, clerk, and transcribed the same day.
My name is Antti Halonen. I am twenty-four years of age. I have been at sea nine years. I signed on the schooner Lempi at Rauma in May, under Captain Johan Mikkola, who was also part owner. We were eight hands. We loaded battens at Sundsvall and sailed for London on the 2nd of December. It was late in the year. The captain wished to make one more voyage before the ice.
On the night of the 12th we had a gale from the north-east. We were running down the coast under small canvas to make the Flamborough light. The captain had been on this coast many times. He had his book of lights. He said to us in the evening, the Carr Stone is to the west of us, it shows four flashes in a half minute, when we raise it we shall haul off and give it a wide berth. He said this to the whole watch, and he made the boy say it back to him: four flashes.
I was on deck from midnight. The mate, Erik Lindroos, had the deck. We looked for the light. There was no light. There was spray and rain but not so much that we could not see the lights of Whitby when we passed them, very low on the land, earlier. The mate said the Carr light must be farther south than he thought, and that we were well off. We kept our course.
Asked whether a light four miles off could be hidden by the weather that night. — No. Not that light. It stands high. I have seen it since, from the window where I lodge in this town, all night long.
At about two o'clock or a little after, we struck. She struck forward and swung round and went over on her side on the rocks. The sea went over her. The captain and two men were taken off the deck at once. I did not see them again. The rest of us got into the main rigging.
When we had been in the rigging perhaps one quarter of an hour, the light came.
Asked to say exactly what he means. — It came all at once, close above us. Not a lamp being lit. All at once, as when a door is opened in a dark house and there is a fire in the room. (E) It was there whole. The tower was above us, very near, and the lantern at the top was full of light, and the light was turning. I counted it. Four.
Asked whether he saw anyone in the lantern. — Yes. When it first came there was a man standing in the lantern, close to the glass, with his arm up, so. As if he had a hand on a curtain. Then he went away from the glass.
Asked whether he is certain the light had not been burning before, and hidden from him by the sails or the rigging. — We were looking for it for two hours. The mate was looking for it. The boy said four flashes, four flashes, every time he came on deck. There was no light.
I went down from the rigging because the mast was going. Lindroos told me to make for the ladder; we could see it in the light from above, the brass. He said he would come after me with the boy. I got on to the rocks and the sea took me against the ladder and I held on and went up.
At the top there was a door with a lamp in it and two men. The old one was in front. He stood in the doorway. He did not come out to me. I was holding on to the outside of the door with my arms and the sea was coming up the ladder under me. He said a thing in English. I did not understand all of it. I understood (E) welcome and (E) stay. He said it three times. He was smiling.
Asked why he did not go in. — I do not know how to say it so that it is understood here.
Asked to say it in his own way. — At home my grandmother used to say that a house that asks you in three times wants something from you. I do not believe the things that my grandmother said. I am a seaman; I have been to Hull, to Antwerp, to Buenos Aires. But I had seen the light come on, and I had seen a man take his arm down from the glass, and here was the man. I thought: this is the man who put the light out, and now he is asking me into his house. I held on to the door. I thought I would rather go back down the ladder to Lindroos.
Then the young one said something, very quick, not smiling, and put out his hand past the old one. I did not understand the words. I understood that he was afraid for me. I went in on his word. Not the old man's. I wish that to be written.
(E) I go in for the young one.
After that they gave me dry clothes. The young one put me in his own bed. I heard Lindroos on the rocks. I heard him for a long time. I heard him call my name, and the boy's name, and once the name of the ship. The young one wanted to go down. The old one would not let him. He took the young one outside on the balcony and talked to him, and I heard him say a word I knew from Hull, (E) music. When they came in the young one would not look at me.
In the morning the young one and I found Lindroos and brought him up. We did not find the boy.
Asked how the Principal Keeper conducted himself towards him in the days following. — He was very kind. He gave me his chair, his pipe, his tobacco. He gave me the best of the food. He showed me the lamp, the many wicks, the brass machine that turns it, how to wind it, how to trim. He showed me the curtains that hang inside the glass to keep the sun off it in the day. He showed me how they draw, on a rail, quickly, with one hand. He said that in the summer a man could sit up there and see the whole coast from Saltburn to Scarborough, and that a man could do worse than stay. He said it many times. Stay. I knew that word by then.
Asked whether the Principal Keeper ever said anything to him about the light on the night of the wreck. — Once. On the night after the wreck, when the young one was below and I was sitting with him in the lantern. The young one did not want me to sit there without him, but the old man came down for me himself and asked, and he was the master of that house. He looked at the sea for a long time and then he said, in English, slowly, so that I would understand: (E) They always come to the Carr. Every one of them. It's only that some of them have to be shown the way in. Then he smiled and asked me if I would like to wind the machine.
I did not wind it. I went down the stair to the young one, and the young one got up out of his bunk and came up and kept the watch with us, though it was not his.
After that the young one and I did not leave each other. We had it in turns by the clock. When the old man had the watch, one of us was always awake, and the bedroom door was open, and we could see the light on the water through the window and count it. Four. Every half minute. I counted it for three nights.
On the 16th the boat came with the Superintendent. The young one gave him a letter before anybody else spoke. I do not know what was in it. The old man shook my hand at the door and said again (E) stay, and I came down the ladder and got into the boat.
Asked whether he has anything to add. — Only this. He asked me in three times and the young one once. Write that. I went in on the young one.
And when I go to sea again, and come down this coast, I will look for that light, and I will count it. I will count every one.
Read over to the witness in Swedish by the interpreter, and signed by him in his own hand.
Antti Halonen
11.40. Relief landed, with the Superintendent. P.K. Rudd went ashore in the boat by order of the Superintendent. The lantern curtains unhooked from the rail and taken ashore with him, by the same order. Pennock returned. The seaman Halonen went ashore. The body of the mate Lindroos sent ashore. —T.G. 15.40. Light exhibited. Wind W., moderate. —T.G. 18.00. Watch to J.P. Light burning well. —T.G. 18.00. Relieved A.K. Light burning well. I have looked. —J.P.
THE END
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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem quīntum decimum Kalendās Novembrēs (18 October 2026), ā Bramō Stokerō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.
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