Indeed life inside the lighthouse did prove precarious. Think of making your bed thus in the crest of a breaker! To have the waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eyeing you always, night and day, and from time to time making a spring at you, almost sure to have you at last.” “Here was the new iron light-house, then unfinished, in the shape of an egg-shell painted red, and placed high on iron pillars, like the ovum of a sea monster floating on the waves…When I passed it the next summer it was finished and two men lived in it, and a lighthouse keeper said that in a recent gale it had rocked so as to shake the plates off the table. Henry David Thoreau described passing Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse in 1849: In 1847, a crew began working from a schooner anchored next to the ledge, and over two years and $39,000 later, on January 1, 1850, Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse was illuminated for the first time. The reasoning was that the legs would offer almost no resistance to the wind and water. Instead, Swift proposed a radical new design consisting of nine, sixty-foot-long iron pilings cemented five feet into the submerged rock, atop which would perch the lantern and keeper’s dwelling. Topographical Department, knew that it would be terribly expensive if not impossible to build a traditional solid cylinder that could survive full exposure to the ocean. The Lighthouse Establishment heard and responded. A wreck on this fatal reef is always attended with the destruction of human life, owing to its great distance from the shore, and the tremendous sea that rolls in over the rocks when the wind is at the eastward.” The loss of lives and property here have been annual, and will continue to occur until alight is established, and the one at Scituate suppressed. He asserted that the area was “annually the scene of the most heart-rending disasters.” Lewis concluded his report on Minot’s Ledge with the following: “A light-house on this reef is more required than on any part of the seaboard of New England. Lewis, who submitted a report in 1842 detailing the more than forty vessels that had met their end in the previous decade as a result of the ledge. The need for a beacon at the ledge was not lost on lighthouse inspector I.W.P. The tragedy that earned the area its name happened in 1754, when a prominent Boston merchant named George Minot lost a valuable ship there henceforth it was called Minot’s Ledge. During low tide when the sea was calm, the Indians would paddle out to offer dishes, ornaments, and beads as sacrifices to appease the “Wicked One.” Apparently these offerings were rejected, since by the 1750s eighty ships and 400 lives had been lost in the surrounding waters. Even before the White Man saw his ships wrecked in those waters, Indians had lived in awe of the evil spirit “Hobomock,” who dwelt beneath the rocks and unleashed violent storms. As early as 1695, a schooner crashed on those treacherous rocks and sank, leaving no survivors. The light’s base, an almost invisible outcropping of rocks off Cohasset, Massachusetts, has plagued mariners for more years than the light has protected them. Since its beginning over a hundred and fifty years ago, Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse has inspired awe in a broad spectrum of visitors ranging from the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Helen Keller. Situated two-and-a-half miles from shore, the lighthouse is visible for miles but accessible only by boat. With its grey stone tower rising almost magically out of the water and its distinctive 1-4-3 flash cycle that has caused romantics to dub it the “I-Love-You” light, Minot’s Ledge is often called one of the most romantic lighthouses in the country. Plans for original Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse
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