Several lighthouses have been on this island over the years. It is now unmanned, but functioning.

Storms frequently swept over White Island. One particularly severe gale struck in 1839 when Celia was four years old, washing away henhouses and forcing her father to bring the family's cow into the kitchen. During the storm the brig Pocahontas was wrecked on a nearby sandbar and all aboard perished. The memory of this incident inspired Celia Thaxter's poem, "The Wreck of the Pocahontas," which read, in part:

  I lit the lamps in the lighthouse tower, 

For the sun dropped down and the day was dead. They shone like a glorious clustered flower, Ten golden and five red.

Like all the demons loosed at last, Whistling and shrieking, wild and wide, The mad wind raged, while strong and fast Rolled in the rising tide.

The thick storm seemed to break apart To show us, staggering to her grave, The fated brig. We had no heart To look, for naught could save.