Don’t spend twenty-three years as a lighthouse keeper in rural Newfoundland without picking up some stories.
Barry Porter occupied the lighthouses at Long Point, Twillingate, Surgeon’s Cove Head on Exploits Island and the Bacalhao Island lighthouse at Herring Neck.
Porter has written “Adventures of a Lightkeeper” about his experiences, including a mysterious encounter with a strange 60-foot longline on Exploits Island in 1992.
He says the boat almost crashed into the rocks about 2km from the lighthouse. Porter and his partner spoke to the man, who appeared to be “totally out of it” and took him back to port security where he moored at the Government dock. The next morning, the man and his boat had left only the ropes they had cut.