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Old lighthouse keeper painting1/11/2024 Lighthouse in 1919 with bell tower and dwelling The rear range light was no longer needed after the completion of Butler Flats Lighthouse in 1898. It is maintained by private parties, and is faint, insufficient, and liable to various interruptions.Ī red light was exhibited from a small, wooden tower mounted on Fairhaven Bridge to serves as a rear range light with Palmer Island Light, and it served until 1891, when the role was assumed by a white electric light established on mill No. The light now in use is formed by the insertion of a red pane of glass in one of the street lamps on the bridge. It need be visible but about 4 miles, so as to be seen beyond Butler Flat, a point 2 ½ miles from the city, where there is a turn in the channel, which at that point is but about 200 yards wide. In 1885, the Lighthouse Board requested $200 for a light on a bridge linking New Bedford and Fairhaven:Ī small light is needed here, to be used as a range-light in connection with the Palmer’s Island light, and to assist vessels to enter New Bedford Harbor at night. Whether his complaints were addressed or not is unclear, but a 1931 inspection would list the same water problem. George Cowie, who served from 1874 to 1891, complained of brackish well water and soot from New Bedford’s factories that blew across the island, contaminating the cistern. Life was not always pleasant for the keepers on Palmer Island. The tower was outfitted with a new lantern in 1863. In 1856, Palmer Island Lighthouse was one of twenty in the district to receive a new fifth-order Fresnel lens. The seal bears the motto, “Lucem Diffundo,” which is translated as, “I spread the light” or “I diffuse the light.” At its peak in 1857, New Bedford was the world’s richest city per capita and held all the federal contracts for the supply of whale oil for the country’s lighthouse system. In recognition of Palmer Island Light’s importance, in 1853, New Bedford commissioned a new city seal with “a view of the Northerly extremity of Palmer’s Island, with its Light House, of a whale ship under sail in the harbor, of a Steamboat passing out by Palmer’s Island and the City of New Bedford in the distance,” from local jeweler and engraver James T. Initially, the government balked at paying for Rodman’s “experiment,” but later reimbursed him, even though the use of whale oil was not adopted at that time. For the seventy-nine-and-a-half gallons of oil used in his trials, Rodman billed the government $105.80 – an amount equal to the average cost for lighting Clark’s Point Lighthouse over a similar period. Later that same year, New Bedford whaling merchant Samuel Rodman experimented with whale oil as an illuminant at Palmer Island Lighthouse. To protect the lighthouse, a ninety-nine-foot-long seawall was built in 1852 on the east side of the island. Keeper William Sherman first lit the tower’s lamps on August 30, 1849. The lighthouse was connected to the higher part of the island, where the wooden keeper’s dwelling was located, by a walkway, and the project came in $173 under budget. Pierce, and Palmer Island Lighthouse, with its conical, twenty-four-foot-tall stone tower and birdcage-style lantern, was erected in 1849 on the northernmost tip of the island using rubblestone, and wooden doors and floors. The contract to design and build the lighthouse went to architect Charles M. government finally appropriated $3,500 for the lighthouse on August 14, 1848, and an acre of land on Palmer Island was purchased the following year. Palmer Island Lighthouse with birdcage lantern Lewis noted in his 1842 survey that a lighthouse on Palmer Island was additionally required and “would add materially to the facilities required on entering this important harbor.” A Maact of Congress approved $2,000 for the building of a beacon light at the mouth of New Bedford Harbor, but Inspector I.W.P. As residents of the nation’s whaling capital in the mid-1800s, New Bedford shipowners and sea captains vigorously petitioned for the construction of a light to mark their harbor.
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