Minots Ledge Lighthouse

© Elinor DeWire

A mile off Cohasset, Massachusetts is a forbidding ledge of granite that bares its teeth at low tide. The Quonahassits believed the evil demon Hobomock lived beneath this ledge. When he grew irritable, Hobomock roared to the surface and churned up a nasty storm. To appease him, the Quonahassits paddled out to the ledge at low tide and left offerings, which Hobomock greedily devoured when the tide rose.

A 97-foot stone lighthouse stands over Hobomock's home today. (Image above courtesy of NOAA.) Although it hasn't altered his mercurial temperament, its bright flash has kept ships away from his treacherous lair for over a century. Officially listed as Minots Ledge Lighthouse by the Coast Guard, the beacon is affectionately called "Lovers Light" by smitten couples ashore. Its famous 1-4-3 flash in the dark seems to be a pledge of "I love you."

The dark granite tower at Minots Ledge has been awash for most of its career. Built in 1860, it is considered a marvel of marine engineering. Its illustrious designer, Joseph G. Totten, was the first American to successfully build a masonry lighthouse on a wave-swept, offshore ledge. He borrowed his design from the British, who had built huge, offshore towers at such formidable spots as Eddystone, Inchcape, Skerryvore, and the Lizard. But Totten learned more from his predecessor, William Swift, than from British engineers.

Swift had designed and built the first Minots Ledge Lighthouse in 1850. This peculiar tower stood less time than it took to build it and gave its name to one of the worst storms in New England history - the Minots Light Storm of 1851. About a century before this costly storm, a colonial merchant named George Minot lost a valuable, cargo-laden ship on the ledge. Thereafter, the rocks were known as Minots Ledge. Though the settlers of Cohasset did not believe in the demon Hobomock, they were respectful of Minots Ledge. Between 1832 and 1841 alone, it destroyed more than 40 vessels. Merchants and seamen alike pressured the government for a beacon on this spot, since it lay very close to the shipping lanes of Boston.

Up until this time, the United States had confined its lighthouse building to onshore sites or rocks and islands in protected areas. The British, as mentioned, had developed several revolutionary designs for lighthouses on exposed unstable sites. Captain William Swift, of the U.S. Army Topographical Corps, was sent to study Britain's offshore towers, then to examine Minots Ledge and design a tower suitable for it. Swift was impressed with the screwpile lighthouse design, used in estuaries and bays in England. It was already being studied for use in the Florida Keys, as well as the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Swift felt the screwpile's open framework design would offer less resistance to wind and waves than would a solid masonry tower. He also liked the idea of anchoring piles into the ledge itself.

Swift's plans were approved early in 1847, and construction began that summer. A schooner was tied up at the ledge to house workers. They could work only at low tide, and with the ledge dry a mere 3 or 4 hours a day, the foundation proceeded slowly. Eight holes were drilled in a circular pattern over the 25-foot ledge, with a ninth hole in the center. Each hole was 12-inches in diameter and 5-feet deep. The drilling machinery washed off the ledge several times before all nine legs of the tower were secured in their foundations with cement. Atop the legs was hoisted a keeper's house with a 16-face lantern room. The result was perhaps the most peculiar lighthouse ever to stand in New England.

When Henry David Thoreau passed it on his travels up the Massachusetts Coast, he likened it to "...the ovum of a sea monster floating on the waves."

On New Year's Day 1850, Keeper Isaac Dunham illuminated the strange tower for the first time. Its light was a long-awaited blessing to shipping, but within a month Dunham was convinced the tower was unsafe. He requested it be strengthened with crossbraces, but the government declined. Even Dunham's kitten found the lighthouse unsafe. One day, as he worked in the lantern room, he invited the kitten up the service ladder and allowed her to go out on the lantern gallery--ironically also called the "catwalk." The kitten, skittish since her arrival on the strange tower, rushed to the edge of the gallery and leaped into the air. Her tiny body was shattered on the rocks below, then swallowed by the waves. Her death only added to Dunham's fears about the lighthouse. Subsequent storms did nothing to allay his fears. As a result, Dunham resigned only nine months after assuming his duties.

He was replaced by John Bennet, who after only a week at the lighthouse also warned of its instability. Bennet noted that during gales dishes danced off the table in the kitchen, and the entire structure rocked and reeled "like a drunken man." In April 1851, Bennet went ashore on business and left the lighthouse in the care of his two assistants. The following day, a storm blew up and prevented Bennet's return. He watched anxiously from shore as the tower was pummeled by high winds and heavy waves, some so powerful they washed over the top of the 70-foot structure.

The storm intensified as night approached, and Bennet feared for the safety of his assistants. Around midnight, the men began hammering on the fogbell in distress, but no one could help them. Shortly after 1:00 a.m. the iron legs of the lighthouse snapped like matchsticks. The huge tower sank below the waves, taking its keepers -- John Wilson and Joseph Antoine -- to their deaths.

Following the disaster, the steam towboat R.B. Forbes, and later the lightship Brandywine Shoal, were moored off the ledge to serve as temporary beacons until a new tower could be built. Joseph Totten, Chief of Engineering for the United States, began to look at new designs. He was impressed with Britain's offshore masonry towers and determined that this was the most suitable design for Minots Ledge. Combining practical principles of offshore marine engineering, such as a foundation sunk directly into the ledge, the center of gravity as low as possible, and a tower that was smooth and sloping to throw waves back upon themselves, Totten came up with a solid design that closely resembled the famed Eddystone Lighthouse of the English Channel.

The 114-foot tower took five years to complete. It was ceremoniously illuminated for the first time on the night November 15, 1860. But the celebration was quickly marred by reports of strange happenings at the new lighthouse. Its two new keepers heard tapping sounds in the tower and believed them to be the ghosts of the former keepers, as it was known that these men often signaled to each other by tapping on the stovepipe in the old tower. The lens and lantern were mysteriously polished on several occasions, and passing ships began to report a spectral figure seen clinging to the ladder at the base of the lighthouse.

Minots Ledge Light--haunted or not? A little Photoshop work on this collectible card seems to suggest the ghosts are all in fun.

Ghosts aside, a tour of duty on Minots Ledge was like a prison sentence. It was a place that easily stirred the imagination. Keepers nicknamed it "The Rock," and many resigned or were removed under odd circumstances. One man complained that the tower had "no corners," while another was killed when he fell from the top of the tower in the station lifeboat; a third man was driven to suicide after ice sealed shut the tower door and temporarily trapped him inside.

The misery of serving at this desolate and wretched site ended in 1947 when the Coast Guard installed automatic machinery and made the lighthouse self-sufficient. Since then, the light has been visited only for periodic maintenance. Its damp, musty interior is occupied by spiders, and birds find the lantern a comfortable perch.

In 1977, Minots Ledge Lighthouse was made a national historic landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Its uniqueness, and the extraordinary achievements of its designer and builder were finally recognized, nearly a century after its construction. The Coast Guard made extensive repairs to the tower in 1987 and again a decade later. It continues to operate and is a much-loved part of Cohasset's coastal scenery. Each year, thousands of visitors peer across the waves at its hulking, gray form.

Perhaps they view it with a mix of admiration and dread, as Henry David Thoreau did in 1871 when he saw the replacement for that first "sea monster": "The lighthouse rises out of the sea like a beautiful stone cannon, mouth upward, belching only friendly fires."

Library of Congress image

This article originally appeared in Mariners Weather Log, Summer 1989.

© Elinor DeWire, 1989.

"Minot's Beacon"

by Alexander C. Corkum, 1906

Out where the waves of the Ocean

Thunder and break in their wrath

Here on the outermost danger,

Near to the mariners' path,

Standing on treacherous footing,

Towering over the sea

Flash I my signal of warning

Of one -- four -- and three.

Wrapped in a mantle of darkness,

Lashed by the wind and the wave

Swaying beneath their encounters,

Often their furies I brave;

And by the tears of the tempest,

Dimmed tho' my radiance be,

Still I keep flashing my warnings

Of one -- four -- and three.

Mist often mingles with darkness,

Pall-like upon me they close,

Hiding my treacherous neighbors,

Whom I am here to expose;

Then with my voice I'm proclaiming

Dangers the eye cannot see,

While I keep flashing my warnings

Of one -- four -- and three.

Winds that have fiercely assailed me

Whisper their gentle regret,

Waves that beseiged me in anger

'Round me remorsefully fret,

Always impassive I greet them,

Duty is sacred to me;

So I keep flashing my warnings

Of one -- four -- and three.

Here thro' the varying seasons,

Gray weather-beaten I stand,

Guiding the course of the seaman,

Cautiously making the land:

All to all people who pass me,

Seeing the 'Land of the Free,'

Flashing a welcome and warning

Of one -- four -- and three.