Thacher Island, located one mile east of Cape Ann, near Rockport and Gloucester, consists of about fifty acres of exposed rock, covered in places by a small amount of soil. From early Colonial times, much of the surrounding area’s history and economy were tied to the sea. Over 500 shipwrecks are said to lie beneath the waters off Cape Ann, and it was one of these that lead to the naming of the island.

On the night of August 14, 1635, the Watch and Wait was lost near the island while trying to make her way from Ispwich to Marblehead during a tremendous storm. The ship’s owner, Anthony Thacher, and his wife, Elizabeth, managed to make it to the island following the shipwreck, which claimed four of Thacher’s children and seventeen other lives. To help compensate for his losses, the General Court awarded Thacher the island off Cape Ann on which he bestowed the name “Thacher’s Woe.”

In 1771, a six-man committee was authorized by the British of Massachusetts Bay Colony to buy Thacher Island for 500 pounds and to “erect a lighthouse or houses, and a convenient house for the keeper.” All previous U.S. lighthouses had served to mark the entrances to ports, but the two towers on Thacher Island were the first to mark a “dangerous spot” on the coast — the Londoner, a partly submerged reef one-half mile from the island.

The original twin wood and stone towers were likely octagonal in shape, and stood forty-five feet tall and about 300 yards apart. The lights were positioned on a north/south axis enabling seafarers to line up the lights one behind the other to locate due north and were the eleventh and last light station in America built under the British. Cape Anners, mainly seafarers, looked on from the mainland as the towers were lit on Forefathers’ Day (a holiday honoring the Pilgrims), December 21, 1771, and promptly dubbed the twin lights “Ann’s Eyes.”

Captain Richard Derby of Salem and Captain Nathaniel Allen of Gloucester (Allen supervised the lights’ construction) selected Captain Kirkwood as the first keeper. Kirkwood—a Tory—held his post until July 6, 1775, when militiamen forcibly removed him. A report to British headquarters stated: “This day two or three companies went from Cape Ann to Thacher’s Island, broke the lighthouse glasses and lamps all to pieces, brought away the oyl [sic] together with Captain Kirkwood’s family and all he had on the island and put them on the main to shift for themselves.”

The lights remained dark during the revolution and were not fully repaired until 1784, when the General Court appointed Peter Coffin and Samuel Whittemore to make the Cape Ann lighthouses operational again.

Formerly, the thirteen colonies had been responsible for their own navigational aids, but Congress, realizing the importance of lighthouses, voted on August 7, 1789 to place them all under Federal responsibility. Officers of the Revenue Cutter Service—a precursor of the modern Coast Guard—inspected the lighthouses and delivered supplies to them.

From 1792 to 1814, Captain Joseph Sayward served as keeper on Thacher Island. In 1814, James Sayward was offered the “old and feeble” Joseph’s position, but as the pay was only $250 per year, he refused. Aaron Wheeler, however, accepted the assignment, and he was given the additional task of clearing 300 yards of large boulders and surfacing smaller ones to create a path between the towers, for which he was paid a $100 bonus. Aaron Wheeler was followed by Charles Wheeler (1834-1845), who ended up earning $450 annually for caring for the twenty-two lamps in the two towers.

Cape Ann Light Station was a site for several lighthouse experiments over the years. In 1807, Winslow Lewis, an unemployed ship’s captain, developed an Argand Light, which he tested at Thacher Island. It proved brighter and more fuel-efficient than the old spider light, and in 1810, Lewis persuaded the federal government to adopt his lamp and parabolic reflector system. For $60,000, Lewis sold his patent to the U.S. government and agreed to refit all forty-nine U.S. lighthouses with his new system and maintain them for seven years. Lewis installed his lamps at Cape Ann in 1815 and then built a red brick keeper’s house in 1816 for $1,400. Lewis returned in 1841 to repair and refit the two lighthouses and lanterns.

In 1857, Congress appropriated $81,417.60 for two new towers equipped with first-order illuminating apparatuses, and in August 1860, the original towers were removed and temporary lights installed in preparation for the construction work. The New Hampshire granite blocks used in the towers were cut, fitted, and numbered on the mainland before being transported to the island. Local Rockport granite was considered too soft and iron-rich, although it would later be used to build other lighthouses including Graves Light in Boston Harbor. Situated 900 feet apart, Cape Ann’s current twin towers are 124-feet-tall and were lighted for the first time on October 1, 1861, soon after Abraham Lincoln took office.

The diameter of the lighthouses is thirty feet at the base and tapers to eighteen feet where the ten-foot-tall lanterns are seated. Cast-iron spiral staircases lead to the watch room and lantern room, each of which open to a balcony that encircles the tower. A ventilating ball with a lightning rod tops the sixteen-sided iron and bronze lantern.

First-order Fresnel lenses from France were used in the towers, a vast improvement over Lewis’ Argand lamps and reflectors. Each lens stood twelve feet tall, was six feet in diameter, weighed over three tons, and employed thousands of pieces of glass to focus the light of whale oil lamps into beams that could be seen twenty-two miles at sea. The new towers began to be called “The Twin Towers of Thacher Island,” but have always officially been named the Cape Ann Lights.

At times, as many as five men were required to keep the two lights and fog signal on Thacher Island. But it was a woman, Maria Bray, wife of Keeper Alexander Bray, who captured the admiration and respect of the masses for her Herculean efforts during an 1864 storm.

Maria was a multifaceted woman who wrote and edited stories and articles, participated in the anti-slavery and temperance movements, and studied sea mosses and algae. She also learned to perform her husband’s lighthouse duties, which proved quite fortunate.

After Keeper Bray, a Civil War veteran, was promoted from assistant to principal keeper with an annual salary of $1,000, one of his assistants required transport to the mainland for emergency medical care on December 21, 1864. Keeper Bray and another assistant who accompanied him planned just a brief stay on the mainland, but a fearsome blizzard prevented their return to the island. For two long nights, Maria was forced to repeatedly brave the blinding storm, climb 148 steps to the top of the nearest tower with fuel in tow, trim the wicks and clean the lantern panes, and then make her way through the howling wind and snow to the other tower, 900 feet away, where she performed the same tasks. Although the storm raged on, Alexander eventually decided to attempt the crossing and managed to return home guided by Cape Ann’s Eyes in time for Christmas. Some sources say Maria’s young nephew, Sidney Haskell, helped operate the fog signal and lights during those two nights, but her obituary credits the wives of the two assistants.

Do not believe Maria’s actions were without peril, or that she could have sat idly by waiting for her husband’s return without repercussions. Keeper John Farley died in 1891 when he was washed off the island by an “ugly wave” while performing his duties, and to let the lights go out could have been disastrous, for even with Cape Ann lit, in 1898, the great Portland gale claimed the steamer Portland with all 176 souls aboard, along with 150 more ships in a mere day and a half.

The 1875 Annual Report of the Light-House Board records that illumination experiments were conducted at the station using small lamps with solid wicks. One of the light towers was supplied with lard oil and the other with sperm whale oil, and lard oil, which was less expensive, was shown to produce a brighter light.

A two-story, wood-frame dwelling was constructed for the principal keeper near the south tower in 1876. This house sits on a granite foundation and has a kitchen, living room, and bedroom on the first floor, and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. Nearby, the 1816 brick dwelling built by Winslow Lewis remains standing though it was greatly enlarged over the years to accommodate two assistants and at one point even a schoolroom. A keeper’s dwelling was built near the north tower in 1861 and later expanded into a duplex, but this structure was destroyed by fire in the 1950s. Its foundation is still visible on the island.

On August 6, 1884, kerosene (called mineral oil at the time) was introduced at the station. When the beacon in the north tower was extinguished in 1932, America lost its last station with twin lights. That same year, the south tower was electrified thanks to a 6,000-foot submarine cable. The new characteristic for the station was five white flashes every twenty seconds.

The Fresnel lens was removed from the south tower in 1975 and was on display at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Museum in Connecticut until 2011. Vandals destroyed the Fresnel lens in the north tower, but pieces of it can be seen at the Sandy Bay Historical Society and on the island. Following the automation of the south light and fog whistle in 1979, the Town of Rockport leased the island from the U.S. Coast Guard, which removed its last four-man crew in 1980. In late 2012, the Cape Ann Museum announced it had been offered the lens and was raising funds for its restoration and exhibition. The lens arrived at the museum in May 2013.

The Thacher Island Association was founded in 1983 to support and encourage historic preservation and restoration of the structures on the Island. The north tower was extensively renovated beginning in 1986, after which it was relit as a private navigational aid. A 15-watt fluorescent lamp replicates the amber glow of the original lamp and is visible for about eight miles. A flashing red beacon in the South Tower continues to be operated by the Coast Guard as an official aid to navigation making Cape Ann Light Station the only twin light in official operation in the United States.

The Thacher Island Association restored the brick assistant keepers duplex in 2002, providing facilities for resident keepers as well as an apartment that could be rented by the public. From 2003 to 2007, the principal keeper’s dwelling was restored. Under the care of the association, Cape Anne’s Eyes seem certain to keep watch over the surrounding waters for the foreseeable future.

Photo Gallery: 1 2 3 4 5

References

1. The Lighthouses of New England, Edward Rowe Snow, 2005.
2. The Lighthouses of Massachusetts, Jeremy D'Entremont, 2007.
3. Annual Report of the Light House Board, various years.
4. “Cape Ann Light Station National Historic Landmark Nomination,” December 9, 1998.
5. “ Women of the Lights. Thacher Island's Indomitable Maria Bray,” Jeremy D’Entremont, Lighthouse Digest, March, 2007.