Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1894 — A LIGHTHOUSE TRAGEDY. [ARTICLE]

A LIGHTHOUSE TRAGEDY.

Destruction of the First Structure on Minot’s Ledge. The lighthouse on Minot’s Ledge stands within the shadow of a tragedy. It is the second structure erected upon the ledge. The first lighthouse and the lives it held were claimed by the sea. Begun in 1847 and completed in November, 1848, it wps overwhelmed in April, 1851. Its destruction was the most tragic event in the history of our lighthouse establishment. The structure was An octagonal tower supported upon wroughtiron piles strengthened by braces. The piles penetrated five feet into the rock. On the braces, thirty-four and a half feet above the rock, the keeper had constructed a platform for the storage of bulky articles, and had fastened to the lantern-deck, sixty-three feet above the rock, a five-and-a-half-inch hawser which he had anchored to a seven-ton granite block. Along this hawser articles were hoisted up to the platform, and there landed. These “improvements” were convenient—and fatal i; not, however, to the keeper who had made them,

for he was on shore when the storm which has beceme historic for its fury burst over the Coast. On Monday, April 14, 1851, there was a strong easterly gale blowing. At that time there was on the tower two assistant keepers and a friend of the principal keeper. The visitor became frightened at the first indication of a storm, and, in response to a signal from the tower, a boat put off for Cohasset and took him ashore. On Tuesday the wind swung around to the northeast, the most dangerous quarter from which the elements can hurl themselves on Minot’s, as they then rejoice in the accumulated fury of miles of wind-torn sea. By the 16th it had increased to a hurricane, and the tower was so completely buried in the heavy seas that nothing of it could be seen by the group of anxious watchers at Cohasset. About four o’clock in the evening of the 16th the platform was washed ashore. Then the watchers knew that the water had risen to within seven feet of the tower. At nightfall it was seen that the light was burning. It was observed at fitful intervals until ten o’clock that night, when it was finally lost to sight. At. one o’clock on the morningof Thursday,April 17, just at the turn of the flood, when the outstreaming tide and the inrushing hurricane met at Minot’s, a violent tolling of the lighthouse bell was heard. After that no sound rose above the din of the storm. About six o’clock in the morning a man walking along the shore saw a chair washed up a little distance ahead of him. Examing it, he recognized it as having been in the watch-room of the tower. After this discovery no one had any doubts of the tragedy which had been enacted behind the curtain of the storm. When it lifted, naught was seen over Minot’s Ledge but the sea, its white crests streaming triumphantly in the gale. It is believed by those competent to judge of such matters that the destruction of the tower was due to the surface which the platform constructed by the keeper offered to the waves, and to the strain of the hawser upon the structure. Every time this hawser was struck by a sea it actually tugged at the tower. There seems also little doubt that the sum appropriated by Congress for the building of the lighthouse was insufficient by about two-thirds for such a structure as the perilous situation called for.—[Century.