Millard Urquhart. a native of Jonesport, Maine, was born in 1899. After a couple of years working as a Coast Guard surfman at a local lifeboat station, Urquhart became the second assistant keeper at Ram Island Ledge Light in Cape Elizabeth in 1926. In the following year he moved to Seguin Island as a second assistant. He moved quickly up the ranks, becoming a first assistant in 1930 and then principal keeper in 1931. In 1939 he became the principal keeper at Libby Island Light Station, where he finished his career as a keeper in 1943.

Urquhart’s granddaughter Bertha Caler has taken an interest in preserving the story of his career as a lighthouse keeper. Her mother and one of her uncles were born on Seguin Island. Bertha is an aficionado of lighthouses in general, especially in Maine.

This is an edited interview first heard in May 2021, and the subject is Montauk Lighthouse on Long Island, New York. Located at the eastern tip of Long Island, Montauk is the oldest (1797) lighthouse in New York and the fourth oldest active lighthouse in the country. When the light station was automated and de-staffed in 1987, a museum opened in the keeper’s house, operated by the Montauk Historical Society.

Mia Certic became the executive director of the Montauk Historical Society in April 2020. She is a writer and screenwriter who’s lived in California for many years, but she’s spent every summer in her life at Montauk. Henry Osmers is now retired as historian for the lighthouse, and he’s written four books about Montauk history. One of them, On Eagle’s Beak, published in 2008, was the first major history of the lighthouse.

Campobello Island is in southwestern New Brunswick, Canada, near the border with Maine. With trade, fishing, and shipbuilding flourishing on Campobello in the 1820s, it was decided that a lighthouse was needed. The lighthouse and the other station buildings were constructed in 1829 on a tiny island just offshore, accessible by land only at low tide. The 51-foot tower is one of the oldest surviving wooden lighthouses in North America.

The station remained staffed with resident keepers until its automation in 1986. A group called the Friends of the Head Harbour Lightstation was formed in 2000 to preserve the site and its history. Ilana Grallert is on the board of the Friends of the Head Harbour Lightstation and performs all kinds of functions for the group, as you’ll hear. Ilana was formerly a processing specialist at the special collections library of Dartmouth College.

Knotbrook Taylor is an award-winning poet who is originally from England and is now living in Scotland. The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses commissioned him to write a book of Scottish lighthouse poems in 2010, and he was the poet in residence for a time at the museum. His experimental photography has also received wide acclaim. In this live stream episode Knotbrook reads a number of his poems about Scottish lighthouses and discusses his own experiences traveling the coasts of the UK.

The video can be seen here.

Jim Claflin, who is based in Massachusetts, is a recognized authority on antiques of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, Life-Saving Service, Revenue Cutter Service and early Coast Guard. Jim has specialized in antiques of this kind since the early 1990s. He is the owner of Kenrick A Claflin & Son Nautical Antiques, which has been in business since 1956.

Jim specializes in out-of-print books, documents, postcards, photographs, maps and charts, engravings, lithographs, uniforms and insignia, tools, lamps, lens apparatus, equipment and apparatus and much more. You can see his latest offerings at lighthouseantiques.net. He’s also the author of ten books on lighthouse and life saving history, and he has served as a volunteer “keeper” at Race Point Light Station on Cape Cod.

This is part two of a two part interview with Richard Cummins, a native of Ireland who worked as a lighthouse keeper in that country for a decade. This is an edited version of a conversation first heard on the podcast in 2020. Richard spent time as a keeper at the very famous Fastnet Rock Lighthouse; at Hook Head, one of the oldest operating lighthouses in the world; and some other well known light stations – more than 20 in all.

In this part of the interview we talk about what it was like to live at isolated lighthouses, and also about Richard’s more recent career as a photographer and an acclaimed builder of ships in bottles.

This is the audio from a live streaming episode on June 3, 2026.

Seguin Island Light Station is about two and a half miles off of the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine. The establishment of a light station on Seguin was approved by president George Washington in 1793, and the buildings were completed in 1796. The 53-foot stone tower that still stands was constructed in 1857 along with a duplex keepers’ house. A new first-order Fresnel lens was installed, and that lens remains in operation today.

The light was automated in 1985 and the keepers were removed. Concerned local citizens founded the Friends of Seguin Island Light Station in 1986. In February 1998, under the Maine Lights Program, ownership of the property was transferred to the group. There are two guests in the episode. Chris Hall was the registrar and curator of exhibits at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath and he’s now the historian for FOSILS. Tip Koehler is a retired Naval architect with 41 years in naval combatant design, manufacturing, and testing on Bath built ships. and is the vice president of the Friends of Seguin Island Light Station.

Here is the live stream:

Join host Jeremy D’Entremont and guest co-host Joy Tubby as they chat with Gerald Butler, a longtime Irish lighthouse keeper and author. This is the audio from a live stream on May 28.

Click here to see the video of the live stream.