The Light Keepers Part 40

APPENDIX.

EXTRACTS FROM OFFICIAL REPORTS.

To the end that the modern light-house service may be the better understood and appreciated by whosoever reads this story of the Maine coast, the following extracts are taken from the last annual report of the Light-House Board, and from the work on the Light-House Service, prepared by Mr. Johnson, chief clerk of the Light-House Board, and published by the Government:

The famous Pharos of Alexandria, built about 285 B.C. is the first light of undoubted record. The light-house at Corunna, Spain, is believed to be the oldest existing light-tower. This was built in the reign of Trajan, and in 1634 it was reconstructed. The erection of the Eddystone Light-house, off Plymouth, England, formed an era in the construction of light-houses. The masonry was 76 feet 6 inches, and the top of the lantern 93 feet, above the foundation.

It was completed in 1759. The various courses were so dovetailed into each other, and the whole fifty so secured together, that the tower was almost as solid as if cut out of the solid block. Immense difficulties had to be overcome from the first landing on the rock on April 5, 1756, to the laying of the first stone, June 12, 1757, and the last, on August 24, 1759. But strong as it was, it became necessary to take it down and rebuild it on a neighboring rock, as that on which it was founded was weakened from the constant a.s.saults on the sea. This was safely done within our own time.

The Wolf Rock Light-house, off Land's End, Cornwall, England, is the last great British work, and both in its structure and its illumination it combines all the refined improvements. A survey was made in 1861, and the foundation commenced in March, 1862. In the first season only eighty-three hours of work could be done, and between that and its completion, on July 19, 1869; there were in the eight working seasons two hundred and ninety-six landings on the rock, and the time occupied was equal to about one hundred and one working days of ten hours each. The cost was 62,726.

The great distinction between the later towers and their predecessors is that the stones of each course are dovetailed together laterally and vertically, so that the use of metal or wooden pins is needless. This method was first used at the Hanois Rock, Guernsey. On the upper face and at one end of each block is a dovetailed projection; and on the under face and at the other end is a dovetailed indentation. The upper and under dovetails are made just to fall into each other, and when the hydraulic cement is placed on the surface it so locks the dovetailing that the stones cannot be separated without breaking. Thus, when the cement is set and hardened, the whole of the base is literally one solid ma.s.s of granite. The lower courses for the first 39 feet of the Wolf Rock Light-house have fillets on their outer edges, into which the upper course is stepped, and this prevents the action of the waves from penetrating the joint.

There is little doubt but that the early colonists recognized the necessity for beacons with which to guide their home-returning shallops to a safe anchorage, and that they took effective means to show the English and Dutch ships which should make their land-fall at night the safe way to the harbor. But the first authentic evidence of this being done at the public charge, is the record of the proceedings of the general court of the Province of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, from which it appears that on March 9, 1673, a pet.i.tion came from the citizens of Nantasket, Ma.s.sachusetts (now Hull), for the lessening of their taxes, because of the material and labor they had expended over and above their proportion in building the beacon on Point Allerton, the most prominent headland near the entrance to Boston harbor. At that session also it appears that bills were paid from Nantasket for making and furnishing "fier-bales of pitch and oc.u.m for the beacon at Allerton Point,"

which "fier-bales" were burned in an iron grate or basket on the top of a beacon, for the building of which Nantasket had furnished 400 boat-loads of stone.

The first light-house on this continent was built at the entrance to Boston harbor, on Little Brewster Island, in 1715-16, at a cost of 2,285 17s 8-1/2d. It was erected by the order and at the expense of the general court of the Province of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, and it was supported by light-dues of 1d per ton on all incoming and outgoing vessels, except coasters, levied by the collector of imports at Boston.

The maritime colonies followed the example of Ma.s.sachusetts, and when the United States by the act of August 7, 1789, accepted the t.i.tle to, and joint jurisdiction over, the light-houses on the coast, and agreed to maintain them thereafter, they were eight in number, and comprised the following lights, all of which are still in existence, though so greatly improved that they are the same only in purpose and in site:

Portsmouth Harbor Light, New Hampshire; Boston Light, on Little Brewster Island; the Gurnet Light, near Plymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts; Brant Point Light, on Nantucket, Ma.s.sachusetts; Beaver Tail Light, on Conanicut Island, Rhode Island, in Narragansett Bay; Sandy Hook Light, New Jersey, entrance to New York harbor; Cape Henlopen, Delaware, at the entrance to Delaware Bay; Charleston Main Light on Morris Island, entrance to the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

The theory of coast lighting is that each coast shall be so set with towers that the rays from their lights shall meet and pa.s.s each other, so that a vessel on the coast shall never be out of sight of a light, and that there shall be no dark places between lights. This is the theory upon which the United States is proceeding, and it plants lights where they are most needed upon those lines. Hence from year to year the length of the dark s.p.a.ces on its coasts is lessened or expunged entirely, and the day will come when all its coasts will be defined from end to end by a band of lights by night, and by well-marked beacons by day.