By AMELIA HEAGERTY

A piece of Point Robinson is missing.

Two historical artifacts were stolen from the serene waterfront park last month — solid brass foghorns that noisily erupted for decades whenever fog was near the point.

There has since been a television news report on the theft and an outpouring of sympathy over the loss of the unique items. The group that oversees Point Robinson plans to replace them with two similar brass foghorns, unless the originals somehow return, said Capt. Joe Wubbold, president of the Keepers of Point Robinson.

It’s likely that the brass horns, weighing 60 pounds apiece, were unbolted from their 8-foot high metal platform and taken for their value as scrap metal, he said.

The thieves probably approached the lighthouse by water at night, so the nearby live-in keeper of the point had little chance to see the crime in progress, Wubbold said.

But the value of the horns, installed in honor of an Islander who loved the point, was so much more, he said.

“It’s an insult to all the people who live on the magical isle of Vashon,” said Wubbold, who discovered the foghorns were missing. “Whoever did that did not think through the much longer-reaching effects that this kind of thing has on many people. It’s not just taking something and converting it into cash.”

Wubbold was discussing a tidbit of the park’s history with visitors on Aug. 16 when he glanced at the platform that had held the historic foghorns since 2010. It was empty. When he saw that they were gone, “my heart stopped beating for a second,” he said.

Susan McCabe, interim executive director of the Vashon Park District, which maintains Point Robinson, said the crime seemed “completely senseless — simple vandalism, and with some effort.”

The foghorns were an audible alert heard across the East Passage of Puget Sound from the 1930s until the 1970s, when the Point Robinson lighthouse became fully automated, Wubbold said.

After their removal in the 1970s, they sat in a storage locker until a decade ago, when they were dusted off and rigged up at the point to sound off with compressed air from a scuba tank, he said.

Longtime Islander Royal English, a Point Robinson lighthouse tour guide and park enthusiast, loved to blow the foghorns, quickly exhausting the scuba tank’s air but enjoying every minute of it, Wubbold said.

“I think he especially liked to share it with the children,” said Kitty English, Royal’s daughter and a Vashon High School teacher. “It’s not something that every kid gets to hear, a foghorn, and he’d let them push the button and make the big old sound.”

When Royal passed away in 2010, donations were made to the park in his honor, and the Keepers of Point Robinson installed the foghorns more permanently atop an 8-foot metal platform next to the lighthouse.

Royal’s history at the park dated back decades. He and his wife Ruth and children Kitty and Wayne were Islanders who summered at a home on Luana Beach before moving there full time. The point was a family destination, and Royal reveled in sharing its history and beauty with others, Kitty said.

After the horns were stolen, Wubbold and other Islanders were featured in a short piece on KOMO News Channel 4, which learned of the theft from a brief story in The Beachcomber. Since then, Wubbold and Kitty said, they’ve received a flood of supportive calls and emails from others who appreciated the foghorns as they did.

“Relatives from around Washington have been calling us and saying, ‘Oh my God, I saw the report and they’re gone. That’s not right,’” Kitty said. “It’s devastating that they’re gone. … It’s a huge loss. I hope they find them.”

Though the horns are recognizable, it doesn’t appear that the King County Sheriff’s Office has any leads in the case, Wubbold said. Law enforcement officials could not be reached for comment on the specifics of the case, but Dep. Jordan Hess, who works on Vashon, said there’s “nothing exceptional” in Vashon’s current level of crime.

“We’ve been trying to keep a tight lid on getting people off the streets, getting those with warrants arrested, and keeping that out of people’s hair,” he said.

Once the new foghorns are reinstalled at the lighthouse, the bolts affixing them to the platform will be thoroughly welded, Wubbold said, deterring any future crime.

But he and Kitty hold out hope that the original foghorns may be recovered or returned.

“We want them back,” Kitty said.