LB2019.1.123219

LB2019.1.123219

Image, taken from a passing vessel, of Halfway Rock lighthouse and associated structures on a rock ledge. Halfway Rock, a large ledge in Casco Bay off Portland, was the site of many deadly wrecks before Congress finally agreed, in 1871, to appropriate the funds to mark the rock with a signal. In 1867 a report from The Navy Board of Commissioners' Committee on Lighting had warned: "...Halfway Rock in Casco Bay lies in the direct course of British navigation to Portland, that a light upon it would be a safe guide which is much needed for clearing the dangers of Bulwark Shoal, and would moreover be the best possible guide to the entrances of the safe harbors of Broad Sound and Harpswell Roads, both of which have an easy inner communication with Portland." In 1871 the tower and and a boathouse were built for $50,000 using granite blocks quarried from islands nearer shore. The new complex, called Halfway Rock Light Station, included a long, rudimentary boat slip built into the rock and leading to the stone boathouse. This latter structure would be replaced in 1889 by a wooden boathouse attached to the lighthouse (visible in the picture). Halfway Rock was a rotating "three-man station", with two men on the ledge at all times and one on leave on the mainland. The lighthouse itself housed one keeper, and included a kitchen on the first floor, a bedroom on the second, assistants' quarters on the third, and a watchroom beneath the lantern. One of the two men was later quartered in the loft of the wooden boathouse In 1887 a forty-three foot wooden pyramidal bell tower was built and bolted to the rock 80 feet away. It was later fitted with a diesel-powered fog trumpet. There was also an elevated oil house, which was a shingled wooden structure about 8 feet square. [source: J. Candace Clifford and Mary Louise Clifford, "Maine Lighthouses: Documentation of Their Past"]