By Roger Pinckney
Savannah is damn inconvenient, 14 miles up-river from the sea, a sea bristling with shoals and black oyster banks. And then there are the sandbars in the river and the river itself, crooked as the wake off a gator’s tail. But mariners persisted, hauling Georgia pine, corn, and cotton to Bremen, Birmingham, Buenos Aires. Lighthouses, luminous beads strung upon a random black string, showed the way.
Each light station isolated in the trackless morass on either side of the lower river and it is easy to see how this place got its name. Each station had two towers, a tall and a short, lights of different colors, maybe one flashing. The lights were kerosene and the flashing was from a “clockwork,” a wind-up rotating parabolic mirror. Line up the lights like the sights on a rifle and you will find safe water.
Miss Florence Martus was the lonely sister of the keeper of the Elba Island Light, just as plain as a mud fence. She was seduced by a Portuguese sailor, folks said, who swore he’d come back in a marrying mood. He didn’t and Miss Florence met every inbound ship, a flag by day, a lantern by night for the next 40 years. The Waving Girl became an international legend, an institution, and skippers would rattle the lighthouse windows with their steam horns as they passed.
But even the most faithful keeper needed time off and when Keeper Martus requested a month, the Lighthouse Service gave Lance Burn a holler. Lance knew the ropes. His daddy was Pappy Burn, keeper of the Bloody Point light over on Daufuskie Island. He packed his duds and Miss Billie brought box-loads of groceries and the couple boarded a government boat to Elba Island. The pay was good and good wages were hard to come by in those Depression years, but there was one special requirement. Miss Billie had to greet every incoming ship, flag by day, lantern by night, for the next 30 days.
Miss Billie was great with child that year and said, “Those sailors must have thought that Portygee had finally returned, for one night at least.”
The Savannah channel is lit with automated solar-powered beacons these days. The Elba Island Light Station is gone, burned when hunters fired the marsh to drive rabbits to the gun. There’s a liquified natural gas terminal there now, shipping gas to Europe, suddenly cut off from Russian energy due to the Ukrainian War.
All gone but never forgotten. There is a statue of Miss Florence down on River Street, 10 miles upstream from Elba Island, eyes focused on some ghost ship out in the channel, little dog at her feet and a flapping flag in her hand.
Locals gaze upon the statue and sadly shake their heads. “She waited on that old boy till she petrified.”
