The Way They Told It

In January 1856 a winter gale swept Matinicus Rock, off the coast of Maine. The keeper had sailed to the mainland, and his teenage daughter Abbie Burgess was left on the rock with her mother and younger sisters. Years later she wrote to a friend about the hens, the wave that took the old house, and the four weeks when no boat could land and the lights never failed. Decades after that, as a keeper herself, she wrote that she still lay awake over the lamps.

In the year 79, seventeen-year-old Pliny the Younger stayed behind at Misenum with a book while his uncle, the admiral, sailed toward Vesuvius. Decades later he wrote two letters to the historian Tacitus about that day and the night after, when his mother begged him to leave her and he would not. We read his words in the English translation published on attalus.org, and we say where the record is uncertain.

Sources:

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/abbie-burgess-16-year-old-heroine-matinicus-rock-lighthouse/

https://downlighthouseroad.substack.com/p/reflections-by-abbie-burgess-grant

https://www.newenglandlighthouses.net/matinicus-rock-light-history.html

https://www.attalus.org/pliny/ep6.html

https://www.getty.edu/news/when-did-vesuvius-erupt-august-october-24/

https://www.yorku.ca/pswarney/2100/pliny-6-16-20.htm

https://erenow.org/ancient/pliny-and-the-eruption-of-vesuvius/7.php

https://archive.org/stream/letterswithengli01plinuoft/letterswithengli01plinuoft_djvu.txt

https://romanletters.org/letters/pliny_younger/6020/

Supported by STELQ.

On May 31, 1889, telegraph operator Emma Ehrenfeld sent a warning about the South Fork dam toward Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In January 1856, Abbie Burgess, sixteen or seventeen, kept two lighthouse lamps burning on Matinicus Rock, Maine, for four weeks while no boat could land. In April 1912, Harold Bride, the Titanic's junior wireless operator, watched his senior colleague, Phillips, stay at the key. On January 27, 1986, engineer Roger Boisjoly tried to stop the Challenger launch.

Each story is told in the person's own published words, read aloud: an inquiry statement, letters, a newspaper account, a written report and a first-person memoir. Together they ask what happens to a warning once it has been delivered, and who it belongs to after that.

Sources:

http://www.nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/emma.htm

https://nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/johnstown-flood-timeline.htm

https://nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/shade.htm

https://home.nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/north.htm

https://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1865-1945/johnstown-flood.html

https://paheritage.wpengine.com/article/forgotten-revolution-women-telegraphy-pennsylvania/

https://www.nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/emma.htm

https://www.history.uscg.mil/Browse-by-Topic/Assets/Water/All/Article/2131686/abbie-burgess-1998-wlm-553/

https://www.nelights.com/blog/abbie-burgess-of-remote-matinicus-rock-lighthouse-in-maine/

https://uslhs.org/sites/default/files/teaching_guides/abbie_burgess/Teaching%20Guide,%20Keep%20the%20Lights%20Burning,%20Abbie.pdf

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/abbie-burgess-16-year-old-heroine-matinicus-rock-lighthouse/

https://www.newenglandlighthouses.net/matinicus-rock-light-history.html

https://www.titanicinquiry.org/USInq/AmInq02Bride02.php

https://www.titanicinquiry.org/USInq/AmInq08EvansCF01.php

https://www.titanicinquiry.org/USInq2/AmInq06Cottam01.php

https://www.titanicinquiry.org/USInq/AmInq14Bride01.php

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/statement-harold-bride.html

https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v4p691.htm

https://onlineethics.virginia.edu/cases/pre-disaster-background

https://onlineethics.virginia.edu/print/pdf/node/42681

https://onlineethics.org/cases/post-disaster-treatment

Supported by SagaSeal.