Candace Clifford

The demise of the first tower built to mark the hazardous Minots Ledge offCohasset, Massachusetts, is one of the most dramatic episodes in lighthouse history. Standing on a pile foundation, a relatively new construction technique at that time, the tower succumbed to a gale within 16 months of completion. Two assistant keepers perished. Although the event has been well documented in the past, primary source material recently uncovered by the author in the National Archives, expands and enriches our understanding of this tragic event.

Lighthouse Keeper Stephen Woolverton wrote numerous letters to Fifth Auditor Stephen Pleasonton during the third decade of the nineteenth century. This correspondence provides glimpses not only into the life of an early keeper, but reflects the struggles of the growing Lighthouse Establishment in defining the role of a lighthouse keeper. There were 155 light stations in the U.S. when we first hear from Woolverton in 1831, no formal instructions were issued to keepers until 1835.

Lighthouses and buoys have been essential aids to navigation in the United States since colonial times. Originally the government contracted private vessels to service the country's aids to navigation or relied on cutters of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. As the nation grew, so did its system of aids to navigation, and in the 185Os, the U.S. Light-House Board designed a vessel specifically for tending aids to navigation. Gradually, most lighthouse districts came to own at least one tender, some powered by sail, others by steam.