In January of 1856, a 26-foot, schooner-rigged lightship was stationed in 4.5 fathoms of water near “The Bishop and his Clerks,” a navigational hazard in Nantucket Sound made up of one large rock and several smaller ones. Eight lamps and reflectors were displayed from the lightship’s mast to warn mariners of the obstruction that since 1851 had been marked with a spindle daymark.

Lightship duty was beyond a doubt the most hazardous in the Lighthouse Service, because no matter how severe the storm, the vessel was required to maintain its position. When possible, the Lighthouse Board favored the use of lighthouses over lightships, as they were less expensive to staff and maintain. The 1856 Report of the Secretary of the Treasury noted, “The erection of the light-house authorized to be placed on the ‘Bishop and Clerks,’ and the transfer of the light-vessel now stationed near that ledge to the Handkerchief shoal, will render the passage of the Vineyard sound (the great thoroughfare of the coasting trade) comparatively safe and easy for the careful navigator.” Congress approved $20,000 for the new lighthouse on August 18, 1856.

Work on the waveswept Bishop and Clerks Lighthouse, located roughly two-and-a-half miles south of Point Gammon, began in the spring of 1857. When completed, the light grey, granite structure, with a wooden appendage to house the fog bell and its striking mechanism, towered sixty-five feet above the rocky shoal and surrounding water, unlike many lighthouses that were complimented by gardens and outbuildings. The Point Gammon Lighthouse on the Yarmouth shore was decommissioned when the fourth-order Fresnel lens in the lantern room of the Bishop and Clerks Lighthouse was activated on October 1, 1858.

The lighthouse was outfitted with a kitchen and two bedrooms, for the keepers who attended the light. Keepers would typically spend twenty days on the light, and then have ten days of shore leave.

Locals on Cape Cod were keen to say that the Peak family had saltwater in their veins, and the number of deep sea captains and lighthouse keepers amongst them lent proof to their words. John Peak replaced his father as keeper of the Point Gammon Lighthouse, served there from 1824 until it was discontinued in 1858, and then became the first keeper at Bishop and Clerks. John and his wife Nancy had nine children while at Point Gammon, two of whom would also enter the Lighthouse Service and be assigned to Bishop and Clerks.

Following years at sea, Samuel Adams Peak became lighthouse keeper first at Bishop and Clerks Lighthouse (1880-1881), then at Bass River Lighthouse (1881-1906) — now The Lighthouse Inn in West Dennis. Samuel’s brother Captain John A. Peak Jr. was lighthouse keeper at Bishop and Clerks (1869) and commander of a lighthouse tender before finishing his service at South Hyannis Harbor Lighthouse (1899-1915), now known as Hyannis Harbor Lighthouse.

In 1869, Lighthouse Board records noted that extensive repairs had been carried out at the station along with the following change to the fog signal: “Steven’s striking apparatus has been substituted for the old fog-bell machinery, removed to the buoy station at Wood’s Hole, whence it is to be sent to the light-house depot, Staten Island.”

The foundation of the tower at Bishop and Clerks was built of wood, and by 1874, the destructive action of the sea had exposed the supporting timbers, requiring them to be covered by concrete masonry. In 1889, 150 tons of riprap stones were placed around the tower to protect its foundation, and a red sector was inserted in the lantern room to cover Cross Rip and Tuckernuck Shoals.

The base of the tower was again repaired in 1898, and a cistern was added to the cellar. The following year, a “new revolving machine” was installed for the lens, and a room in the old bell tower was lined with galvanized iron and fitted up as an oil room.

Despite the care to ensure maritime safety, foul weather and dangerous currents continued to claim vessels, such as the 3-masted schooner, Ella and Jenny, loaded with guano that crashed into the shoals during a fierce snowstorm in December 1904.

Standing just four feet nine inches tall, Charles Hinckley was known as the shortest keeper in the Lighthouse Service, but he, by far, had the longest tenure at Bishop and Clerks, serving from 1881-1884 as an assistant and then from 1892 until the light was automated in 1923 as the head keeper. In 1909, Keeper Hinckley was quoted in the magazine Along the Coast as saying, “There ain't a great deal of me so far as height goes but I am all right from my feet up. I've laid many a man bigger than me on his back if I do say it myself.”

In 1928, Bishop and Clerks days as an active lighthouse drew to an end. The automated light was discontinued, and the darkened tower began its life as a daymark. After being damaged by a severe storm in 1935, the Bishop and Clerks Lighthouse was listing and near collapse when the Coast Guard decided to demolish the structure in 1952. Sixty-eight holes were drilled into the granite base of the tower and packed with sticks of dynamite. Then, shortly before 1 p.m. on September 11, 1952, as sightseers in pleasure boats looked on, a thunderous explosion was heard, and the granite tower toppled into the sea. In its place, the Coast Guard erected a 30-foot, white pyramidal slatted daymark.

The hidden rocks at Bishop and Clerks still pose a threat to navigation and today are marked by a white cylindrical tower, with a red band, that at night produces a white flash every six seconds.

References

1. The Lighthouses of New England, Edward Rowe Snow, 2005.
2. Annual Report of the Light House Board, various years.
3. “History of Bishop and Clerks Lighthouse, Nantucket Sound, Mass.,” Public Information Division of the U.S. Coast Guard, CPI/ME Mead, November 1952.
4. The Mercantile Navy List and Annual Appendage to the Commercial Code of Signals for All Nations: 1857, edited by J. H. Brown, 2000.
5. “Keeping faith with the maritime history of Hyannis”, Kathleen Szmit, The Barnstable Patriot, August 12, 2005.
6. The Boston Daily Globe, December 16, 1904.