Before you can tell the story of the granite tower, first you must tell the tale of “an eggshell painted red,” which is how Henry David Thoreau described the original light built on Minot’s Ledge off Scituate and Cohasset’s shore.
This lighthouse rested atop nine iron pilings, the idea being that the violent waves would simply rush through its legs and leave the building itself untouched. The reality, however, was something else entirely. The whole thing swayed and quavered in storms, terrifying its tenants. The first keeper did not last a year, leaving in October of 1850, a mere ten months after Minot’s Light was first lit.
On April 16, 1851, a terrible storm roared in. The light was being kept by Joseph Antoine and Joseph Wilson, two assistants; at one in the morning, someone at Minot’s Light began frantically sounding the bell. And that was all. By the time the sun rose, all that remained of Minot’s Light were bits of its iron legs. The storm, like a toddler with a dandelion clenched in its fat fist, blew and scattered it like so many seeds across the ocean floor.
This memorial to Joseph Antoine and Joseph Wilson sits on Government Island in Cohasset Harbor. You can see a depiction of the light they perished in on the stone’s face, as well as the inscription, “They kept a good light.”
Government Island played an important part in the building of the second Light at Minot’s Ledge – but that’s a story for tomorrow.
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