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| Egg Rock Light Station |
First Lit: June 15, 1856; Rebuilt: 1898; Automated: 1919; Deactivated: 1922
at Position: Latitude, N 42° 26.01'; Longitude, W 70° 53.9' Nautical Chart
Egg Rock, Nahant Bay
0.7-miles Offshore from Black Mine,
Nahant, Massachusetts
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- Keeper’s House and Tower was destroyed October, 1922.
During the move onto a barge, the lighthouse crashed into the ocean. -
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Notes: (1) Egg Rock Light was built to mark the rock island at the entrance to Nahant Bay. In 1629, Swampscott was settled as a seasonal fishing outpost from Naumkeag (Salem) surrounded by farmland owned by the residents of Lynn and Salem. Swampscott slowly developed and was still only a rural and fishing outpost by 1830. For 200 years, fishermen made short voyages in small dories from the coastal beaches of Swampscott. Coastal water travel was the practical and quickest means of transportation between coastal settlements of Swampscott, Marblehead, Salem, Lynn, and Nahant. After preserving the fish in small wooden fish houses on Swampscott beaches, seasonal fishermen easily returned by boat to their permanent homes with their catches. From 1832 to 1855, Swampscott Fishing industries rapidly expanded from sixty dorymen fishing during the summer in 1832 to 39 schooners employing 226 men catching 5.6 million pounds of cod in 1855 when Swampscott fishermen began deep-sea fishing. A Lighthouse was needed on Egg Rock to safely guide Swampscott fishing fleet away from the rock island as they approached Fishermans Beach. Egg Rock, named for the birds that nest and lay eggs, is a egg-shaped rock island located in Nahant Bay 0.7-miles offshore from Nahant that is a dangerous obstruction to fishing vessels approaching Swampscott. Egg Rock was owned by the City of Salem since Swampscott was not incorporated as a town until 1852. In 1856, the City of Salem ceded Egg Rock to the Federal Government after Congress received a petition signed by thirty presidents of Boston life and property insurance companies who insured Swampscott fishermen. A Lantern Room Light Tower on the roof of a two story Keeper’s house was built exhibiting a Fixed White light illuminated by a Fifth-order Fresnel and one oil lamp. Later, the Light Characteristic was changed to Fixed Red on June 15, 1857. George B. Taylor was appointed as the first Lightkeeper. Dexter Stetson, a Nahant resident, was one of the construction workers of Egg Rock Lighthouse and he later became the construction foreman of the tallest brick Lighthouse in America. From November 4, 1868 to December 16, 1870, Dexter Stetson and his crew erected the 198-foot high Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Due to the monotonous and solitary job of keeping a Lighthouse, many Lightkeepers owned dogs for companionship. Generally, the lively role of Lighthouse dogs was rarely documented in the logbooks yet Milo, the friendly Newfoundland-St. Bernard dog of Lightkeeper George B. Taylor, became famous for his lifesaving skills and barking at ships approaching Egg Rock in foul weather. Milo became nationally famous when English painter, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, preserved the dog’s protection and security in a portrait, entitled “Saved,” of Milo with Keeper Taylor’s son, Fred, sheltered between the dog’s paws. In 1897, the Lighthouse was destroyed by fire. A 32-feet high white square brick Tower was built attached to a white Keeper’s House. The new Lighthouse was First Lit in 1898 exhibiting a Fixed Red light 90-feet above sea level illuminated by a Fifth-order Fresnel and one oil lamp. In 1906, Lightkeeper Captain George L. Lyon invented and constructed a landing stage on the island to bypass the dangerous boat landing on Egg Rock. A hand winch hoisted the boat out of the water onto the landing deck and the boathouse above. The fishing industry of Swampscott experienced a significant steady decline from 115 fishermen in 1878 to 29 fishermen in 1915. During World War I (1917 to 1919), Egg Rock Light was extinguished in order to prevent enemy submarines in the area sighting landfall at night. After the war, the Lighthouse was modernized with an automated beacon. In 1922, the government decommissioned Egg Rock Light due to the diminished navigation. The Lighthouse was sold as surplus for five dollars with the stipulation of removing the building from the island at the owners expense. The new owner hired a crew to move the Lighthouse onto a barge. During the downhill move, a rope snapped and the house rolled into the ocean in October 1922. Today, Egg Rock is a bird sanctuary named the Henry Cabot Lodge Wildlife Sanctuary due to the efforts of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The island can be seen from the northern beaches of Nahant to the beaches of Swampscott. Locally, Egg Rock is famous for the legend of a huge sea serpent that has been seen through the centuries and sighted by local Indians before 1629 as almost a mile long according to Obadiah Turner who described “a wonderful big serpent lying on ye water, and reaching from Nahantus to ye greate rocke wich we call Birdes Egg Rocke.” On January 14, 1858, Henry D. Thoreau wrote in his journal that several hundred Swampscott residents saw a sea serpent and noted “The road from Boston was lined with people directly, coming to see the monster. Prince came with his spy-glass, saw, and printed his account of him. Buffum says he has seen him twenty times, once alone, from the rocks at Little Nahant, when he passed along close to the shore just beneath the surface, and within fifty or sixty feet of him, so that he could have touched him with a very long pole, if he had dared to.” On July 7, 1960, Captain Ellis Hodgkins and a party of seven aboard his charter boat, Julyntha, sighted a monstrous “sea serpent” just outside Dogbar Breakwater at the entrance of Gloucester Harbor. (2) The Light Characteristic was changed to FR [Fixed Red] on June 15, 1857. (3) Egg Rock, owned by the State of Massachusetts, has been a bird sanctuary since 1927.  |
 
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Copyright ©2000 to 2003 by Debbie Dolphin.
Document Updated: Sunday, November 30, 2003, 09:03:00am Eastern Standard Time (-5GMT)
