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Adapted from
Granite Guardian of Rockland Harbor
By Brian Harden
For 103 years, a narrow granite barrier, almost hidden at high tide, has sheltered Rockland Harbor from the ravages of easterly storms. Stretching 4,346 feet from Jameson Point on the north side of the harbor, the breakwater extends as far into the waters of Penobscot Bay as Rockland's Main Street runs along the shore.
It took 18 years of engineering and labor to build the Rockland Breakwater, at a cost of more than three quarters of a million dollars. Nearly 700,000 tons of stone, much of it quarried at Vinalhaven 15 miles away, went into
its nine sections, forming a trapezoidal jetty 175 feet across the base and 45 feet wide on the upper surface.
After a disastrous December gale in 1850, which drove two schooners aground, a bill was introduced by Senator William Fessenden of Maine to build a breakwater. The bill passed in the Senate, but was defeated in the House by congressmen from landlocked states who had no appreciation of the destructive capabilities of a Maine nor'easter.
Despite the initial setback in Congress, efforts to build a breakwater were renewed periodically until Congressman Thompson H. Murch of Rockland successfully obtained a $20,000 appropriation in the Rivers and Harbors Act of June 14, 1880. It called for the building of a "rubble-stone breakwater for the protection of the harbor against easterly storms to which it is much exposed."
As construction of the Jameson Point jetty progressed, beacons placed on its southern end warned ships that a barrier of stone was being extended into Rockland Harbor. At first, these lanterns hung from wooden beams braced by stones atop the wall. Then, in 1888, a small portable light station was erected on granite blocks at the southern extremity of construction. It was described in the government's List of Lights, Buoys, and Daymarks (1898) as a small wooden building surmounting a stone beacon and showing two fixed lanterns with red lenses, 23 and 29 feet above the surface of the breakwater.
Between 1888 and 1895, this light station was moved four times. Charles Ames was paid $25 a month for lighting the lamps at dusk and extinguishing them at dawn every morning. On foggy nights, when the Boston boat was due in Rockland, Mr. Ames made another trip to the light station and, as the steamer approached, struck a large metal triangle as a warning. At low tide, he could walk from land to the light, but when the tide was high, and in the winter when the breakwater was covered with ice, he often rowed from Jameson Point.
Between 1900 and 1902 the stone light tower and keeper's dwelling were erected at the end of the breakwater by W.H. Glover Company of Rockland. This lighthouse is unique in its placement 7/8 of a mile at sea and yet accessible to the shore by walking. The Coast Guardsmen lived here until 1963, the last date when the light was actually manned by the keepers who followed the steps of Charles Ames.
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