One man's lightship…

COURTESY PHOTOS Robert Mannino is bringing the Nantucket Lightship, officially known as the LV-112, to Boston from Oyster Bay, New York. The Nantucket Lightship, officially known as the LV-112, guarded the shipping lanes near the deadly Nantucket Shoals for nearly four decades. It was the largest lightship ever built for the Nantucket Shoals, replacing the LV-117, that was split in half and sunk by the RMS Olympic in dense fog in1934. Built in 1936 at the Pusey & Jones Shipyard in Wilmington, Delaware to replace the LV-117, the British government paid the $300,956 bill for the LV-112 as reparations. Last week it sold for $1 to Robert Mannino of New Hampshire. "We are looking at moving the ship in late November, early December and restoring it," said Mannino, who formed the nonprofit U.S. Lightship Museum for the purpose of saving the vessel. "We plan to open it as a public museum, get it fully operational and take the ship out a couple of times a year in the New England area." The U.S. Lightship Museum purchased the lightship from the National Lighthouse Museum in Staten Island, N.Y. The LV-112 was acquired by the National Lighthouse Museum in 1996 and was to be its centerpiece, but the museum was never built. For the past several years, it has been moored in Oyster Bay Harbor, N.Y.

"For all its years, it is in relatively good condition. It needs painting and cleaning, but we don't know what the condition of the bottom is. The engines have not run in four or five years, but they are in running condition," said Mannino. "The ship has not been pumped out in a year. There is oil and water in the bilges. It's been neglected. It hasn't been out of the water for 15 years."

Lightships never had names, only numbers and each vessel had its own number. The name of the station was painted on the side. Since Nantucket was the last station in operation and closed in 1983, lightships from other stations were retired to Nantucket.

The LV-112 was withdrawn from the lightship service for two years during World War II and used as an examination vessel from 1942 to 1945 at Portland, Maine. During the war, it had its lights removed, was repainted battleship gray and mounted with a gun and a cannon. It was also used as a relief vessel from 1958 to 1960, before returning to Nantucket for the rest of its career. Decommissioned on March 28, 1975, the LV-112 was retired to the Charleston Navy Yard in Boston. It was brought back to Nantucket in December 1975 by a crew consisting of men from the island and from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution under the command of Captain R. P. Dinsmore, USCG (Ret.).

On Nantucket, the LV-112 was tied up at Straight Wharf and was operated by the Nantucket Historical Association for 10 years as a floating classroom before it was sold in 1984 to a lightship preservation group in Maine. From 1984 to 1996, the lightship changed hands several times; each time the new stewards would operate it as a floating museum. In 1996 it was sold to the National Lighthouse Museum in Staten Island, New York.

"It's been through four or five different owners, most of them successful stewards," said Mannino. "When we move the ship, some of its former crew members will be on board."

Through the years, a total of 12 lightships served Nantucket. The LV- 112 is one of three vessels in existence with "Nantucket" painted on its hull. The other two are the WLV-612, which is owned by Bill Golden, an attorney and former state senator, and is moored in Martha's Vineyard and the WLV-613, which is owned by Jack Baker, a retired Acton businessman, and berthed in Wareham, Mass. Both the WLV-613 and the WLV-612 were decommissioned in 1983 when the Nantucket station closed and both have been restored and made into luxury yachts by their current owners.

"Both owners spent way too much money taking a historic ship and turning it into a yacht," said Mannino. "They can't sell them. This vessel has never been modified. It is fully intact as a historic vessel. We want to share it with the world." I