Identifier: kingshandbookofb1882swee (find matches)
Title: King's handbook of Boston harbor
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: Sweetser, M. F. (Moses Foster), 1848-1897 King, Moses, 1853-1909 Copeland, Charles, 1858-1929, ill
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Publisher: Cambridge, Mass., Moses King, publisher
Contributing Library: Boston College Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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tains a fixed redlight, visible for seven miles. It was built in 1856, to warn vessels againstthe dangerous Hardings Ledge, which lies off Point Allerton. One of thebest studies which Halsall has painted represents this picturesque beacon,in the midst of the roaring sea. At one time, when shepherds followedtheir calling on these islands, a large flock of sheep were driven out onthe bar by excited dogs, and kept there, huddled together in terror, until therising tide drowned them all. The Light-House Island, once known asthe Little Brewster, or Beacon Island, is a trifle over eight miles from Bos-ton, and about 1^ miles north of Point Allerton, across the main shipchannel. As early as the year 1679 there was some kind of a beacon onthe Great Brewster; for Dankers and Sluyter, the Dutch Labadist envoys,said that they observed one on the highest of the islands, twelve miles fromBoston, which could be seen from a great distance. In 1713 the Bostonians A/JVGS HANDBOOK OF BOSTON HARBOR. 21J
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BOSTON LIGHT. 218 KINGS HANDBOOK OF BOSTON HARBOR. began to hold town-meetings about establishing a beacon at the mouth ofthe harbor, since its want hath been a great discouragement to navigation,by the loss of the lives and estates of several of His Majesties Subjects.The General Court ordered its construction, and provided that all vesselscoming in from abroad, or clearing therefor, should pay a penny a tontowards the cost. This was in the first year of King George I.s reign.Hull granted the island for this purpose, being censable that it will be agenarall benifit to Trade; and the light-house was built, at a cost of.£2,386. The first keeper of the light was George Worthylake, who wasdrowned while sailing up to town, with his wife and daughter, in 1718. Allthreewere buried on Copps Hill; and Benjamin Franklin, then a North-End lad, wrote a doleful poem describing their fate, and entitled TheLight-House Tragedy. About the middle of the last century an ingenious system of guardingthe

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