Terrible Tilly: The Lonely Beacon That Defied Hell Itself

The Cost of Progress

His rough measurements were enough to begin planning the new lighthouse and request additional funding from Washington. The project would be one of the most ambitious lighthouses in the country.

An additional $50,000 was allocated, bringing the total to $100,000, a very large sum for the time. With funds secured, Wheeler and his team were ready to begin the difficult task of taming Terrible Tilly.

Tragedy wasn’t far behind. Master stonemason John Trewavas was hired to carry out a proper survey and lead construction.

His experience working with numerous lighthouse projects in England made him a natural fit for the project. In September, the revenue cutter Thomas Corwin was again commissioned to take Trewavas and his team to Tillamook Rock.

The weather was fair. A surf boat was launched to ferry the crew to the rock.

As they approached, swells began to build. Trewavas was the first to step foot on the rock, but at that exact moment a huge wave ripped the boat away.

The man was sent tumbling into the roaring sea. His assistant dove into the water to try and save him, but the undertow pulled Trewavas away.

After an intense struggle, the assistant was finally pulled back into the boat, but John R. Trewavas was lost. His body was never recovered.

Terrible Tilly had claimed her first victim. He would not be the last.

Decapitating the Rock

The accident had a chilling effect on the project. Locals began to openly doubt whether it would be possible to build anything on the rock, let alone a modern lighthouse.

But Wheeler pressed forward. Public opinion in Astoria turned decidedly against the project, and many warned that the men hired to build the lighthouse were being sent to die.

A new construction superintendent, Charles A. Ballantyne, was brought on to succeed the late John Trewavas. He would directly oversee the work and ensure that it was done as safely as possible.

To shield the eight to ten workers already assigned to the project from gossip, the hired men were quartered across the Columbia at the old lightkeepers’ quarters at Fort Canby. They would stay there until the weather allowed them to travel to the rock.

On October 12th, a brief weather window opened up and the Corwin managed to clear the bar. They made it to the rock and put down mooring buoys on the north and east side.

Then they waited. After days of driving wind, rain, and waves, the weather cleared just long enough for four quarrymen to board a surf boat and land on the rock.

They soon established safety lines and began bringing on supplies. This included hammers, drills, iron ring bolts, canvas, and supplies to build tents, a stove, food, and protective clothing.

Once they had a foothold, more workers landed on the rock and a small derrick was established to help load equipment. Work on the lighthouse officially began on October 26th, 1879.

The conditions were brutal. Men endured driving rain and wind, near constant squalls, and the ever-present risk of losing one’s footing on the slippery rocks and toppling into the sea.

It was clear that a better way of transferring men and supplies was needed. Soon a rope gondola was erected.

Men would be carried by a breeches buoy. There was some risk that they could be dunked into the water if the ship moved suddenly, but the method was considerably less dangerous than using surf boats.

Before any structure could be built, the top of the rock had to be decapitated using dynamite. Next, a quarryman would be lifted above the rocks by a safety line while he drilled away at the solid basalt rock to level out the surface.

The backbreaking work was tedious and dangerous, but it progressed steadily. On January 9th, 1880, a particularly brutal storm sent waves crashing over the rock, carrying away the small supply house.

Sheltering in their barracks higher up on the rock, Ballantyne kept the panicked men from fleeing the structure. He prevented them from climbing out onto the rock where they almost certainly would have been swept away.

Fortunately, the structure held and the men were safe. It wouldn’t be until the 25th of January that a ship was able to make it out to the rock and ensure that the men were still alive.

A Fortress Against Nature

The terrifying ordeal only seemed to speed up the work. After seven months of hell, in May 1880, the masons and blacksmiths finished leveling out the rock and the site was ready to build the tower.

None of these men signed on for the next phase of construction. No doubt they were eager to leave Terrible Tilly and never return.

As the site was prepared for construction, Wheeler’s initial rough measurements proved to be surprisingly accurate. The leveled rock, 90 feet above the sea, provided plenty of space for an 80-by-45-foot structure.

The design team, led by engineer George Lewis Gillespie, were well aware that they were building a fortress. It had to withstand the worst that nature could throw at it all while keeping the men inside alive.

The structure would be constructed out of cut ashlar stone with 16-inch exterior walls and 8-inch thick interior walls. Each keeper would get his own 10-by-12-foot room.

The position of the lantern room was carefully considered. The light had to be high enough to avoid most waves but not so high that it would be hidden by low hanging clouds and fog.

Gillespie selected a position 136 feet above the sea. But during her long career, this high point would still prove vulnerable during the worst of storms.

The extension on the west side of the building would house the fog signal and accompanying machinery. Two coal-fired boilers would supply steam for the powerful signal.

The most expensive feature of the new lighthouse was its first-order Fresnel lens and accompanying metalwork. Ordered through a San Francisco-based company for $8,200, the lens and lantern arrived by September 1880.

However, the wicks and mirrors of the main tower lantern were missing. It would be months before replacements would arrive and the tower could be finally lit.

The Tragedy of the Lupesia

The delay would prove deadly. Only a few days after the new year in January 1881, tragedy struck Tillamook Rock.

A brutal storm rolled in bringing gale-force winds and torrential rains to the rock. Now three days later, the storm had yet to break.

Superintendent Wheeler heard something different in the roaring tempest. He stepped outside and listened to the shouts of panicked men.

One of the crew even thought he heard a dog howling, but that might have just been the whistling wind. Somewhere in the rain and fog, a British bark had been blown off course and was now dangerously close to wrecking on the rocks.

The men raced to the lantern room and placed a bright lamp in the Fresnel lens. Bonfires were lit on the rocks, but just as quickly as Wheeler spotted the lights of the bark, the mystery ship vanished.

At the first light of dawn, the storm finally broke. The first man to wake stepped outside, but to his horror, the water surrounding the rock was eerily smooth and littered with debris.

The 1,300-ton British square-rig Brigantine Lupesia was nearing the end of a long crossing from Japan to Portland. Whether they saw the light from the tower or the bonfires will never be known.

All 16 men were lost when the ship wrecked on the nearby rocks and was torn apart by the unrelenting sea. Twelve bodies washed ashore; the other four were never found.

Incredibly, among the debris, a young Australian shepherd dog was found alive. He was nearly drowned and likely swam over a mile to shore.