Home Maps Resources Calendar About
Resources Calendar About
Horse Chops, NF  Lighthouse destroyed.   

Select a photograph to view a photo gallery

Photo Gallery

Photo Gallery

Photo Gallery

See our full List of Lighthouses in Newfoundland Canada

Horse Chops Lighthouse

The entrance to Trinity Bay is defined by Horse Chops on the north and Grates Point on the south. A light was established on Baccalieu Island off Grates Point in 1858 to mark the southern side of the entrance to Trinity Bay, but an aid to navigation was not established on Horse Chops until 1930, when a fog alarm was placed in operation there. The light on Green Island, northeast of Horse Chops, was placed in operation in 1857 and helped guide mariners into Trinity Bay, but Horse Chops remained a dangerous obstacle for mariners trying to reach the settlement at Trinity.

The new station at Horse Chops consisted of a flat-roofed dwelling house and engine house, both painted white. A diaphone fog alarm was used to produce the following pattern of blasts: three-second blast, ten seconds of silence, three-second blast, ninety-four seconds of silence according to a 1933 List of Lights, but the next year the characteristic was listed as a three-and-a-half-second blast every sixty-five seconds.

One of the early keepers of the fog alarm was Garland Bannister, shown here in a photograph taken sometime before 1942.

In 2021, an automated horn was sounding a four-second blast each minute at Horse Chops.

Keepers: Garland Bannister (at least 1935), George Bugden, George Clements Penny, Harold Tucker, George Evans, Fred Bowers, George Thomas.


Copyright © 2001- Lighthousefriends.com
Pictures on this page copyright Canadian Coast Guard, used by permission.
email Kraig