arts & Education
POINT SAN LUIS
The Mystery of Souza Rock BY KATHY MASTKO
The ”lighthouse keeper” the 1887 news article referred to was Antonio Souza; his wife, Francisca, née Oliveira. Souza was the man hired to maintain the steamship company’s private light and sound a cannon during foggy weather to help guide vessels into the harbor. Presumably he had been tending to the light ever since it was first installed, as a letter he wrote in 1900 noted that he’d lived at the Point for twenty-seven years. In December 1888, the Tribune reprinted an article from the San Francisco Chronicle announcing that a new danger to maritime navigation on the west coast had recently been located in the vicinity of Port Harford. The paper reported that the steamship company employed “a Portuguese,“ whose job it was to keep a light and fire a gun in foggy weather. This man was a skillful fishermen, the reporter wrote, Diver exploring Souza Rock’s sea life, including metridiums, also known as plumose anemones. Courtesy of Shawn Stamback, SloDivers, Morro who in his spare time fished off the Bay Point and knew that fish were often little over two miles south- a barrier between the placid waters by the government’s unwillingness found in waters where the bottom east of the Point San Luis and the strong northers that occa- to erect a light and fog signal, the was rocky: light station lies a danger to sionally spring up inland. Facing Pacific Coast Steamship Company boats and a diver’s paradise teeming the Point reposes the mighty Pa- had taken matters into their own To ascertain what kind of botwith color and life. It’s an under- cific, which stretches away in the hands. In June 1881, the Tribune tom there is beneath him (when the water monolith that rises to within distance until the restless waters reported on a light the steamship depth is not over twenty fathoms) sixteen feet of the surface, jutting up seem to blend with the azure sky. company was installing: this cunning fisherman lies down abruptly from a depth of nineteen in his boat with one ear glued to fathoms. A gong buoy marks it, The paper noted, however, that Port Harford is assuming such the planking. Listening thus he painted red over green and with a the “aromatic atmosphere” interfered importance as a shipping port, that can tell by certain clinking, scrapred light, referred to as buoy 14SR. with the proper appreciation of the it is quite necessary that there be a ing or sweeping sounds whether view, describing the air at Whaler’s lighthouse at “the Point.” Messrs. he is passing over gravelly, rocky or The hazard is named Souza Rock. Point as “the rankest compound of Goodall, Perkins & Co. have been sandy ocean floors. In this case, he The question is whether it should villainous smells that ever offended unable to get the Government to recognized the clinking sound that be? human nostrils.” At the time, there take hold of this project, and have indicated the presence of rocks and, were twenty men living at the sta- attended to the matter at their own therefore, fish. Preparing to catch In 1887, the San Luis Obispo Tri- tion, engaged in shore whaling un- expense. The lantern and fixtures some, he dropped overboard his bune wrote about a whaling station der the command of John Oliver. came down on the [steamship] weighted line and was surprised on the mainland near Port Harford There were also two women living Orizaba last trip, and from this time when the sinker struck bottom at a (now called Port San Luis), referred at Whaler’s Point: Captain Oliver’s forward the light will regularly send depth of sixteen or eighteen feet… to as Whaler’s Point. The view, the wife Mary and “the wife of the out its radiance over the oft-trou- He repeated the cast and found his paper described, was without rival: lighthouse keeper.” bled waters. The entire expense of boat was over a small group of rocks building the lighthouse, together dangerously near the surface and To the left lies the spacious and Now there wasn’t an “official” with that of employing a man to heretofore unknown. splendid harbor of San Luis Obis- lighthouse on Whaler’s Point or, keep the lights trimmed and lightThe discovery was reported and po, walled in on three sides by lofty indeed, anywhere in the vicinity of ed, is borne by the Pacific Coast on the Queen of the Pacific’s next and rugged mountains that stand as Port Harford at the time. Frustrated Steamship Company.
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16 | april 2022
Central Coast Journal
