Coffin Island receives new lighthouse

Coffin Island has a new lighthouse.

On Tuesday, Oct. 17 a Canadian Coast Guard helicopter was successful on its second try and lifted the 3300-pound tower the three miles from Western Head to the island.

For Coffin Island Preservation Society Chairman Ken Wilkinson, the day saw successes and failures.

He was informed the following day that plans to remove and save the cupola from the old lighthouse went disasterously wrong when during the attempt to remove it, the cast iron cupola shattered into dozens of pieces.

“Right now I’m just glad no one was hurt,� said Wilkinson.

It had been hoped that the cupola from the historic light would be donated to the Beach Meadows community where it could be displayed as a heritage piece.

For months Canadian Coast Guard and Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials have been planning to place a new lighthouse on Coffin Island.

The prefabricated Fiberglas structure that is replacing the Coffin Island Light served as a lighthouse on Eddie’s Point in Guysborough County for the last 20 years. It sat at the Coast Guard Depot in Dartmouth for months, waiting to be placed at its new home.

The historic Coffin Island Lighthouse had been at least temporarily saved from the ravages of the sea in 1999 when efforts to protect it with armour rock were made. Storms had battered much of the protection away and the lighthouse was once again in danger of being felled by the sea.

The new lighthouse is located more than 200 feet from the shoreline.

Coffin Island has has a long association with lighthouses dating back to 1811 when Simeon Perkins laid the foundation’s first stone on what was called Bear Island at the time.

The Island’s name was changed to Coffin Island after one of Liverpool’s founding settlers and island landowner Peleg Coffin by about 1817.

On June 13, 1913, lightning struck the lighthouse, burning it and the keeper’s home to the ground. A little more than a year later the 54-foot octagonal tower seen today and a new keeper’s house was erected.

The lighthouse was automated in 1962.

editor@theadvance.ca