![]() ![]() About three weeks later, ninety miles across the bay, the package was found. ![]() So he circled back and dropped another package. Snow wrote in one of his books of missing the tower at Whaleback Light and realizing that the bundle would be lost in the sea. At that point the Hull Lifesaving Museum took over the custom. A few years after he started this Christmas tradition he was replaced by Edward Rowe Snow, a lighthouse author, who continued the flights himself until his death in 1982. Since most of these light stations were located in lonesome places they really looked forward to this touch with the outside world. Thus began the tradition of the “Flying Santa.” Each year he delivered them by plane dropping them at all the lighthouses in the area near his home. He was so thankful for the faithfulness of the lighthouse keepers who manned the lights, which guided him to safety that he decided to put together small Christmas packages for the keepers and their families. If he hadn’t seen the beams from the lighthouses, which guided him back to Rockland, he probably would have perished because he arrived there just as he was running out of fuel. An unexpected snowstorm arose and he lost his bearings. Many years ago when lighthouse keepers and their families often had little communication with the outside world (1929) a man named Bill Wincapaw was flying in his small single engine supply plane out of Rockland, Maine. They had heard Spot’s barking and now they could chart their course home. Spot kept barking furiously and soon three blasts from the mailboat’s whistle were heard in answer. The keeper had followed the dog and it was then that he heard the mailboat’s whistle and realized if the captain could hear the dog’s barking it would tell him where he was in spite of the storm. So he took off to a point high on the cliff, which was nearest to the boat and barked away. The keeper let him out again and off he scampered through snowdrifts to try to reach the bell, but the snow had piled up too high. Just as he was about to go to sleep, snuggled up in a cozy corner, he raised up on his haunches, lifted his ears, and tensed his body. So the keeper let Spot out but he returned in a little while and scratched to be let in. She knew about Spot and wondered if he might be able to hear the mail boat’s whistle. One very stormy snowy night, the lighthouse keeper received a telephone call from the wife of the mailboat captain who was very worried because her husband was already several hours late. When the boat answered with a whistle, he happily dashed down to the shoreline and barked. Whenever a boat reached a spot near the cliff, he had a habit of running over to the rope attached to the fog bell and tugging on it vigorously with his teeth a few times until it rang out over the water. This little dog loved everything about the lighthouse including the fog bell, and the ships that passed by in the bay. Spot was a springer spaniel who belonged to a girl named Pauline, the daughter of the keeper at Owl’s Head Light in Maine. ![]()
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