Minot's Rocks... lie off the southeastern chop of Boston Bay. These rocks or ledges... have been the terror of mariners for a long period of years; they have been, probably, the cause of a greater number of wrecks than any other ledges or reefs upon the coast.

-- Captain William H. Swift

Minot's Ledge -- about a mile offshore, near the line between the South Shore towns of Cohasset and Scituate -- is part of the dangerous Cohasset Rocks. The roll call of shipwrecks through the years near the Cohasset Rocks was lengthy, with many lives lost. In August 1838, the Boston Marine Society appointed a committee of three to study the feasibility of a lighthouse on the ledge. The committee reported in November 1838:

The practibility of building a Light house on it that will withstand the force of the sea does not admit of a doubt-the importance of having a light house on a rock so dangerous to the navigation of Boston, on which so many lives, & so much property has been lost is too well known to need comment. . .

The Boston Marine Society repeatedly petitioned Congress for a lighthouse between 1839 and 1841, with no positive results. Engineer I W P. Lewis made reference to the problem in his 1843 report to Congress. Lewis's report listed more than 40 vessels that had been lost on the ledge from 1832 to 1841. He asserted, "A light house on this reef is more required than on any part of the seaboard of New England."

In March 1847, Congress finally appropriated $20,000 for a lighthouse on the ledge; an additional $19,500 would eventually be needed for the completion of the project, including $4,500 for the lighting apparatus. The site selected was the rock known as the Outer Minot. Some believed a granite tower similar to England's famed Eddystone Light would be the proper solution, but Captain William H. Swift of the Topographical Department, chosen to plan the tower, believed it impossible to build such a tower on the mostly submerged ledge.

Instead, Swift planned an iron pile lighthouse, a 70-foot-tall, spidery structure with legs piles drilled into the rock, on the theory that waves would pass harmlessly through the structure. The cost-conscious lighthouse administrators of the day appreciated the fact that a tower of this type would be far less expensive than one made of stone. The octagonal keepers' quarters (14 feet in diameter) and wrought-iron lantern were built atop nine 10-inch-diameter piles, cemented into 5-foot-deep holes drilled in the ledge and braced horizontally by three sets of iron rods. In his book Cape Cod, Henry David Thoreau described passing Minot's Ledge Light in 1849: 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 light-house keeper said that ina recent gale it had rocked so as to shake the plates off the table. Think of making your bed thus in the crest of a breaker!

The lighthouse was lighted for the first time on January 1, 1850. It was the first lighthouse in the United States to be exposed to the ocean's full fury. The first keeper was Isaac Dunham. One of Dunham's assistants was his son, Isaac A. Dunham. Keeper Dunham's pet cat is said to have been so agitated by life in the unsteady tower that it jumped to its death in the waves below.

Dunham didn't believe the structure was safe. He wrote in his log book in March 1850:

The wind E. blowing very hard with an ugly sea which makes the light reel like a Drunken Man -- I hope God will in mercy still the raging sea -- or we must perish... God only knows what the end will be.

Fearing for his life, Isaac Dunham quit after 10 months at Minot's Light. The second keeper, John Bennett, also reported the lighthouse as unsafe. In October 1850, he wrote, "Much remains to be done to secure it [the lighthouse] from accident." A visitor stated that the lighthouse swayed two feet in each direction in a storm.

At one point Bennett threw a message in a bottle into the waves, saying:

Our situation is perilous. If anything happens before day dawns on us again, we have no hope of escape. But I shall, if it be God's will, die in the performance of my duty.

Captain Swift, who had designed the tower, felt compelled to answer his critics. On January 18, 1851, a letter from Swift was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser. Swift wrote:

Time, the great expounder of the truth or the fallacy of the question, will decide for or against the Minot; but inasmuch as the light has outlived nearly three winters, there is some reason to hope that it may survive one or two more.

In April 1851, less than three months after Swift's letter, a colossal storm struck the New England coast, turning Boston into an island and flooding much of the area. Here is an excerpt from the official report:

The light on the Minot was last seen from Cohasset on Wednesday night at 10 o'clock. At 1 o'clock Thursday morning the light-house bell was heard on shore, one and one-half miles distant... and it was at this hour, it is generally believed, that the light-house was destroyed; at daylight nothing of it was visible from shore.

Keeper Bennett was on shore at the time, but two young assistant keepers, Joseph Antoine and Joseph Wilson, were killed. The following day only a few bent pilings were found on the rock. A note, found in a bottle the following day by a Gloucester fisherman, read:

An article in New England Magazine stated:

The keeper's house and lantern were fairly above the reach of the average storm seas; but this was not the case with a lower platform which the over-confident keeper had built upon the second series of rods and tie braces, nor with that fatal 5 1/2-inch hawser which he led from the lantern deck out to an anchorage fifty fathoms inshore... there are engineers who still maintain that a similar structure upon a larger scale, if built upon these rocks, would defy the storms of years.

Others also expressed the belief that a platform the keeper had built provided an additional surface for the waves to lift against, and that the 300 feet of cable extending from the deck, covered with ice, contributed to the tower's demise.

From 1851 to 1860 a lightship replaced the tower at Minot's Ledge. Work on the new stone tower began in 1855. The new Minot's Light was designed by General Joseph G. Totten of the Lighthouse Board, and it has been called the greatest achievement in American lighthouse engineering.

Capt. Barton S. Alexander made some modifications in the design and was superintendent of the project. Because the construction could only take place at low tide on calm days, the cutting and assembling of the granite took place at Cohasset's Government Island, attached to the mainland. A team of oxen moved the blocks to a vessel that brought them to the ledge.

Many times during the construction waves swept the workers off the rocks. A Cohasset diver, Captain Michael Neptune Brennock, was hired to act as a lifeguard. When a wave hit, the men learned to hold on tightly to a steel bolt or rope until the danger passed. Only workers who could swim were allowed to work on the project. On October 2, 1858, the cornerstone was laid and an official dedication was held at Government Island. Mayor Frederick W. Lincoln of Boston introduced Captain Alexander. In his address Alexander said: So may it stand, that 'they who go down to the sea in ships' may see this signal fire burning brightly to warn them from the countless rocks that echo with the rage that oft swells from the bosom of old ocean.

The great orator Edward Everett followed Alexander:

Well do I remember that dreadful night, when a furious storm swept along the coast of New England... In the course of that tremendous night, the lighthouse on Minot's Ledge disappeared... and with it the two brave men who, in that awful hour, stood bravely at their posts. We have come now, sir, to repair the desolation of that hour.

An 1892 article in Harper's Young People described life at Minot's Ledge:

Winter life in the Minots tower is very dreary. Its stone courses are so welded together that it has become like one huge piece of stone, and it sways under the blows of wind and wave as the trunk of a tree. But it as firm as the oak it simulates in form. The life tells terribly on the keepers. More than one has so far lost his mind as to attempt his own life, and several were removed because they became insane. In the summer, however, the keepers take turns going ashore, leaving two out of five always there. Visitors often come off to the light. The tower is always well supplied with water, fuel, and food. The library of fifty volumes is often changed, the medicine chest is replenished, and the Light-house Inspector and the Light-house Engineer visit them at frequent intervals.

Legend has it that one keeper quit because he missed corners too much -- Minot's had nothing but round walls. Keepers also had to endure the tremendous thunder of the waves in storms. Waves several times have been known to actually sweep over the top of the lighthouse, and Keeper Milton Reamy claimed that a wave of 176 feet hit the tower on Christmas in 1909.

Click HERE to see an excerpt from aerial film taken by historian Edward Rowe Snow showing heavy seas striking Minot's Ledge Light.

 

Photo by Edward Rowe Snow

Milton Reamy had the longest stint as keeper at the ledge, serving from 1887 to 1915. His son Octavius replaced him and stayed until 1924.

In 1894, Minot's was given a rotating second-order Fresnel lens and a distinctive characteristic 1-4-3 flash. Someone decided that 1-4-3 stood for "I love you," so Minot's got the nickname of the "I Love You Light."

Helen Keller wrote of passing Minot's Ledge Light on her way into Boston Harbor after a trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1901:

...the colors warmed and deepened as we watched the beautiful, gold-tinted clouds peacefully take possession of the sky. Then came the sun, gathering the mist into silvery bands with which he wreathed the islands that lifted their heads out of the purple sea as it passed. A mighty tide of life and joy followed in its track. The ocean awoke, ships and boats of every description sprang from the waves as if by magic; and as we sighted Minot's Ledge Light, a great six-masted schooner with snowy sails passed us like a beautiful winged spirit, bound for some unknown haven beyond the bar. How delightful it was to see Minot's Ledge in the morning light. There one expects to see the ocean lashed into fury by the splendid resistance of the rocks; but as we passed the 'light' seemed to rise out of the tranquil water, like Venus from her morning bath. It seemed so near, I thought I could touch it; but I am rather glad I did not; for perhaps the lovely illusion would have been destroyed had I examined it more closely.

In February 1936, Per Tornberg, keeper at Minot's, and Boatman Manuel Figarado were on their way to the tower in a small boat. The boat became trapped between two ice floes about 600 feet from the lighthouse. The seams on the boat split and it began to rapidly fill with water. Anthony Souza, the keeper on duty, witnessed the men's plight from the lighthouse and telephoned for help. Coast Guard crews from Hull and Scituate soon arrived and rescued the pair.

Supplies and food were delivered regularly, but weather sometimes made deliveries difficult. During one bad winter in the 1930s the keepers were down to their last can of tomatoes before the tender arrived. A well in the lower part of the tower, filled twice yearly by the lighthouse tender, held the water supply for the keepers. One time a party of young women was being given a tour by the keepers. One asked what the well was for. "That's our bathtub," said the keeper. It goes down 40 feet." She paused and replied, "You must be out of luck when you drop the soap."

The Coast Guard was in charge of the lighthouse starting in 1939. One of the last Coast Guard keepers, Wesley B. Eaton, was left alone for extended stretches more than once. After weathering the great hurricane of 1944 in the tower alone, with waves clearing the top of the tower, Eaton decided he was through with lighthouse keeping.

The lighthouse was automated and the keepers removed in 1947. The second-order Fresnel lens was replaced by a third-order lens. When the old lens was removed, it was put in one of the rooms below for temporary storage. Vandals broke into the lighthouse and smashed sections of the lens, which had been due to go to the Boston Museum of Science.

A power cable from shore -- installed in 1964 to replace a battery system -- was damaged in a storm in February 1971, and batteries were again used until the light was converted to solar power in 1983.

A renovation of the tower was carried out in 1987-89. The lantern was lifted off by helicopter and subsequently cleaned, and some of the damaged upper granite blocks were removed and replaced. The Gayle Electric Company of New Jersey, under contract to the Coast Guard, performed the work. The light was relit on August 20, 1989. In 1992-93 the keeper's house at Government Island, built in 1858, was restored for $200,000, raised by the nonprofit Cohasset Lightkeepers Corporation. The house contains two apartments upstairs and a hall for community use downstairs.

Today you can visit Government Island and see a replica of the lantern room of Minot's Light sitting on top of some of the granite blocks removed from the lighthouse during the renovation finished in 1989. The third-order Fresnel lens once used in the lighthouse can be seen inside the replica lantern.

A fog bell is also on display; it was restored by local fisherman Herb Jason and his grandson John Small. Herb Jason had rescued the bell several years ago when it was about to be used for scrap. In 1997, a group of local residents began a campaign to erect a granite memorial to Joseph Antoine and Joseph Wilson, the young assistant keepers who lost their lives in 1851. The monument was finished and dedicated in 2000 on Government Island.

You can see Minot's Ledge Light from Government Island and other points on shore, but it is best viewed by boat. You can read much more about this lighthouse in the book The Lighthouses of Massachusetts by Jeremy D'Entremont.

Keepers:

Isaac Dunham (1849-1850); Isaac A. Dunham (asst., 1850); John Bennett (1850-1851); Joseph Wilson (asst., 1850-1851); Joseph Antoine (asst., 1850-1851); Joshua Wilder (1860-1861); T. W. Ryder (asst., 1860); W. H. Sylvester (asst., 1861-1863); A. W. Williams (asst., 1860-1861); William S. Taylor (asst., 1860-1861); James J. Tower (1861-1874); Thomas Bates II (asst., 1861-1864); James D. Baxter (asst., 1863); Israel Vinal (asst., 1864-1865); Alden Simmons (asst., 1865-1870); John A. Pratt (asst., 1866-1868); Levi L. Creed (asst. 1865-1874, head keeper 1874-1881); Albert H. Burdick (asst., 1870-1877); Wallace Willcutt (asst., 1873-1874?); John G. Hayden (asst., 1874-1877); Thomas J. Sheridan (asst., 1876-1880); Amiel Studley (asst., 1877-?); Joseph B. Vinal (asst., 1877-1881); Charles Davis (asst., 1879-1880); Alonzo Smith (asst., 1880-1881); Joseph A Noble (asst., 1880-1881); Nathan Hendson (?) (asst., 1881); Daniel M. Ryan (asst., 1881-1882); Frank F. Martin (asst. 1881, head keeper1881-1887); Frank W. Thomas (asst., 1881-1883); Lester G. Willett (asst., 1881); Joseph E. Frates (asst.,1882-189?); Joseph Jason, Jr. (asst., 1883); Milton Herbert Reamy (1887-1915); George L. Lyon (asst., 1887-1889); Octavius Reamy (second assistant 1909-1910, first assistant 1910-1915, head keeper 1915-1924); Winfield L. Creed (asst., 1892?-1894); George Holmes (asst., 1892); James Kingsley (asst., 1893-1894); John E. Morrill (asst., 1894); Charles Grey Everett (asst., 1894-1895, second assistant 1905-?); George Jamieson (asst., 1894-1896); Levi B. Clark (second assistant, 1905-1907, first assistant, 1907-?); ? Currier (second assistant ,1910-?); Andrew Tullock (second assistant, 1910-?); Roscoe Lopaus (second assistant, 1896-1905); Pierre Albert Nadeau (assistant, c. 192?-1925); Per S. Tornberg (asst., 1922-1924, keeper 1924-1936); Otis E. Walsh (asst., c. 1930s); Anthony K. Sousa (asst., c. 1930s); George H. Fitzpatrick (asst., 1924-1927, keeper 1936-1940); Wesley B. Eaton (1943-1944); Julian Hatch (Coast Guard, 1946 - March 1947); BM1 Michael Pratt (Coast Guard circa 1946); George Miller (Coast Guard, circa 1946); ? Roach (Coast Guard, 1947)