One of the very first things the U.S. Congress ever did was to put the federal government in charge of lighthouses.
The freshmen Congressmen understood the importance of maritime shipping. The new republic’s economic well-being depended on international trade—which would also pay congressional salaries. Import duties would underwrite nearly 90 percent of the new government.
Federal Hall, Seat of Congress, 1790 hand-colored engraving by Amos Doolittle, depicting Washington’s April 30, 1789, inauguration
On March 4, 1789, in New York City, the first U.S. Congress met for the first time in the newly christened Federal Hall. It had just been remodeled into something grander and more American than its previous incarnation as New York’s City Hall. French architect Pierre L’Enfant added another story, a portico and a balcony held up by Doric columns. An eagle perched in a pediment above the balcony, holding 13 arrows in its talons—one for each new state.
Madison Argues for Lighthouses
Lawmakers first set tariffs on imported goods. Then they established the Customs Service.
A Virginia congressman named James Madison believed the United States had to make its harbors, ports and coastal waters less terrifying to foreign shippers. One obvious solution was to build lighthouses to warn mariners away from dangerous shoals and to guide them to safe harbors in stormy weather.
James Madison
And so, Madison persuaded his colleagues on Aug. 7, 1789, to pass the lighthouse bill. It turned the responsibility for lighthouses over to the federal government.
At the time, 12 lighthouses stretched from Massachusetts to North Carolina. Massachusetts had started to plan the 13th—Portland Head Light in the District of Maine, which then belonged to Massachusetts.
Washington Takes on Lighthouses
The federal government assumed control of the unfinished Portland Head Light. President George Washington then took an interest in its construction, unusual, perhaps, for a Virginia planter. He hired two masons who lived in Portland (then Falmouth) to build the lighthouse. He warned them the federal government didn’t have a lot of money, and he gave them careful instructions. They were to build the tower from stone they found in the fields and seashore nearby, and they were to haul the stones on a drag pulled by oxen.
Portland Head is still standing, a testament to either two Maine masons or one Virginia planter or both.
Unlucky Boston Light
Boston already had a lighthouse—Boston Light on Little Brewster Island. It was the first built in the United States and the first to be rebuilt. During its first hundred years it brought bad luck to almost everyone associated with it.
John George, a prominent Boston shipping merchant, was its first victim.
George asked the Massachusetts General Court on Jan. 3, 1713, to build a lighthouse “for the Direction of Ships & Vessels in the Night Time bound into the said Harbour.” George got his way, but he died on Nov. 24, 1714, before construction even began. His widow buried him in another man’s tomb and later married Cotton Mather.
Boston Light
The next victim of Boston Light was George Worthylake, the first keeper.
On Nov. 3, 1718, Worthylake’s boat capsized while he was returning from church to Little Brewster Island. He drowned along with his wife, his daughter and three men. A 12-year-old Benjamin Franklin wrote a ballad about the drownings called “The Lighthouse Tragedy.” He peddled it on the streets of Boston. The triple headstone of the Worthylake family is in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground.
More Troubles for Boston Light
Several days after the Worthylakes died, Robert Saunders was appointed to take care of Boston Light until the General Court should appoint a new lighthouse keeper. Two weeks later, Saunders and another man drowned close by the lighthouse.
John Hayes was foolhardy, brave, desperately broke, or all three. He took the job as the next keeper of Boston Light. He managed to survive it, though with some difficulty. A fire broke out and Hayes was blamed for negligence. His salary was withheld until he made his case and was reinstated. Another fire later damaged the tower, and lightning struck it several times. The invention of Franklin (the lightning rod) was eventually deployed, despite puritanical objections to tampering with God’s will.
Things went smoothly for Boston Light for the next 40 years until the British blew it up in June of 1776. But the colony rebuilt it in 1783, and it is now the second oldest in the United States. It was also in 1998 the last to be automated.
The Twin Lighthouses of Thachers Island
Massachusetts had two other lighthouses on Thachers Island, but they got torn down during the Revolution.
Thacher Island rises a few feet above sea level about a mile and a half off the coast of Cape Ann. The 50-acre island is mostly rock, but loosestrife, bittersweet and staghorn sumac thrive in its thin soil. Terns nest on the island, and so do cormorants, while large herring and black-backed gulls swirl above, dropping their crab dinners on the granite below. Butterflies flutter among the mint, and the salt air carries the scent of bayberry and honeysuckle.
Under the surface of the waters around Thacher Island lurks the deadly Londoner Reef. Hundreds of Boston-bound ships came to grief on that rocky shoal, so many that mariners clamored for navigational aids to mark the danger. In 1771, two 45-foot lighthouses were built on Thacher Island. They came down four years later because Cape Ann patriots thought they helped the British more than they helped their own side. Thacher Island remained lighthouse-less until 1861, when twin towers, 124 feet high, rose again. They remain there to this day.
Twin lighthouses on Thachers Island
The Most Tragic of the Lighthouses
Minots Ledge Light rises dramatically from a tiny outcropping of ledge one mile off the Massachusetts coast near Cohasset and Scituate. Its beacon flashes in a 1-4-3 cycle, the same number of letters in “I love you.” Hence the nickname “Lover’s Light.”
It was first built after more than 40 vessels wrecked on Minots Ledge between 1833 and 1843. Lighthouse inspector I. W. P. Lewis reported a lighthouse was greatly needed there because of the “heart-rending disasters that happened every year.”
Capt. William H. Swift of the United States Topographical Bureau agreed. But he hesitated. Could a thin granite cylinder anchored to such a tiny speck of ledge withstand the wind and the waves?
Original design for Minots Ledge Light
Swift proposed something radical: cement nine iron pilings into the rock and build the lantern and the keeper’s house on top of them. He reasoned the waves would break harmlessly through the uprights. But he underestimated the strength of gale force winds.
It took two years to build the lighthouse, as workers could only work in calm weather and low tide.
Finally, it was finished, staffed and lit. The first keeper’s cat jumped to its death, panicked by the dramatic swaying of the tower during a storm. The keeper, Isaac Dunham, wrote that a storm in March “makes the light reel like a Drunken man.” He asked the government to strengthen the tower, but the government ignored him. Dunham quit 10 months after he started the job.
‘God bless you all’
John Bennett took Dunham’s place, confident in the safety of the tower. Then he changed his mind. On April 16, 1852, a fierce nor’easter pounded the lighthouse. During a lull at the beginning of the storm, Bennett rowed across to the mainland. His two assistant keepers, Joseph Wilson and Joseph Antoine, remained. The lighthouse began to reel with sickening frequency, but the keepers kept the lantern lit and the bell ringing.
Sometime around midnight, surging waves snapped off the central support to the tower. Next, one of the eight iron stilts broke off, then another. At 1 a.m., the residents on shore heard the keepers pounding the lighthouse bell furiously. Then, in a desperate effort to stay alive, they jumped into the sea. Joseph Wilson managed to grab on to Gull Rock, but he died of exposure. Joseph Antoine’s body washed ashore at Nantasket.
Two days later a Gloucester fisherman found a message from the keepers in a bottle: “The beacon cannot last any longer. She is shaking a good three feet each way as I write. God bless you all.”
The Second Minots Ledge Light
It took five years to build the replacement, a tower of stone this time. It took two years just to finish the iron framework. But the work crew had to start over after a storm flung a sailing barque against the structure.
Workmen then excavated a circular 30-foot trench in the rock. It would hold the foundation stones 2 feet below the low tide mark. Work could only be done in low spring tides when the sea was smooth and the winds were dead calm—about three to five weeks each year.
Design for the second Minots Ledge Light
Meanwhile stonecutters in Quincy, Mass., cut seven massive granite blocks for the foundation. They chiseled interlocking dovetails into each stone, so it fit perfectly with the next stone. Stone laying began in July 1857 and took a year to finish. Once the foundation rose above the high tide mark, work went faster. The new 100-foot-tall Minots Ledge Light was first lit on Aug. 22, 1860. It has survived every storm since. Sometimes an enormous wave breaks over the top of the tower, perhaps breaking a window.
In 2007, divers placed a memorial plaque on the ledge near the lighthouse to memorialize the two lighthouse keepers killed in the line of duty.
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This story about lighthouses is an adapted excerpt from the New England Historical Society’s latest book, “New England Weather.” Historic storms, twisters, floods, droughts, nor’easters, hurricanes and heat waves.” Click here to order your copy today.
Images: Boston Light by By Dpbsmith, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1663166. Cape Ann Twin Lighthouses By Tim Pierce – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11762002
