{ "item_title" : "Lighting the Bay", "item_author" : [" Pat Vojtech "], "item_description" : "At the turn of the century, the powerful beams of sixty-eight lighthouses stretched across a dark Chesapeake to light a safe passage for mariners. From the twin capes to the head of the Bay, and as far upriver as Alexandria and Richmond, these slender towers and squat lanterns marked the often treacherous shoals that snaked out unseen underwater, threatening vessels laden with lumber, produce, sugar, and tobacco, or ferries full of passengers traveling between towns along the Chesapeake. A century ago no body of water in America was better lighted than the Chesapeake Bay. From the beginning it was a struggle to light the Chesapeake. Its soft, undulating bottom presented a different set of problems from those faced along the rocky shores of New England. The Chesapeake's shores shifted before the winds, tides, and hurricanes that plagued the 200-mile-long estuary, and so did the towers of the Chesapeake. On land, erosion was the silent menace; on the water, it was ice. More than a dozen Chesapeake lighthouses bowed and broke before the pressure of thousands of tons of ice bearing down on them. In most cases, the keepers escaped with barely their lives and were forced to walk across dangerous ice packs or row through an ice-strewn Bay. In at least one case, the ice carried away the keepers in the house. Lighting the Bay documents the dramatic events that surrounded the difficult job of lighting the Chesapeake and manning the lighthouses. With more than 100 attractive color photographs complemented by an informative historical narration, Pat Vojtech communicates both facts and the human saga of life as it was on the lighthouses. From heroic rescues to untimely deaths, from everydaylife, birth, and death on the lighthouses to battles with ice, cold, injury, and loneliness, Vojtech provides a glimpse into life on the guiding lights of the Bay. The era of manned lighthouses is gone forever. It has been nearly ten years since a lighthouse was manned on the Chesapeake, and nearly fifty years since the bulk of the lighthouses were automated. Vojtech's well researched work comes just in the nick of time, before many of these lighthouse stories -- remembered by children and grandchildren of the men and women who kept the lights -- would have been lost forever.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/87/033/466/0870334662_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "34.95", "online_price" : "34.95", "our_price" : "34.95", "club_price" : "34.95", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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