Of all
the Isles of Shoals, White Island is the most difficult of access. It is
not easy to land there in good summer weather, and during winter
communication with the outer world is as rare as cold days in July. From
December till May the breakers thunder on the cliff beneath the
light-house like the roar of artillery. One would like to know what his
reflections may have been during this Alexander Selkirk kind of
life,--how he and his wife managed to entertain themselves. Rev. John
Weiss and a friend going to Portsmouth in the summer of '46 visited the
lighthouse and made friends with the family there. They found old
Laighton a pretty rough customer, but good humored enough, and his wife
uncommonly glad to see them. Their daughter Celia was a very bright
looking, rosy faced girl, and the two boys Oscar and Cedric had their
hair cut straight across their foreheads to keep it out of their eyes.
Mr. Weiss thought that when they were in the water they must have looked
a good deal like seals.
In 1848 he resigned his position and removed to Appledore; then as
always on the charts of the coast-survey known as Hog Island. It would
seem to be the last stretch of a fisherman's imagination to call every
long sloping island by that name. There he and his brother Joseph, who
had thus far been a grocer in Portsmouth, built cottages for themselves
and went into the fishing business, purchasing boats, seines, and hiring
a large number of men.
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