Edgartown Lighthouse

by AM FineArtPrints

Title

Edgartown Lighthouse

Artist

AM FineArtPrints

Medium

Painting - Digital Art - Painting

Description

Edgartown Lighthouse by Andrea Mazzocchetti

The first European settlement on Martha’s Vineyard was established in 1642 at the eastern end of the island and given the name of Great Harbor by Thomas Mayhew, one of its founders. In 1671, the name of the town was officially changed to Edgartown, most likely christened as such after Edgar, Duke of Cambridge, a son of the future King James II of England. Edgar had actually passed away a month before the name change, but word of this had not reached the colonies.

Edgartown has a large harbor that faces Chappaquiddick Island to the south and east and was home to a highly profitable whaling industry in the late 1700s and early 1800s. A full quarter of all whaling ships in the United States sailed out of Martha’s Vineyard and nearby Nantucket during that period, and Edgartown was home to over a hundred whaling captains. The opulence of the era can still be viewed today in the form of the churches and captain’s houses that make up the Edgartown Village Historic District.

The Great Hurricane of 1938 inflicted significant damage to the lighthouse, and upon taking control of the nation’s lighthouses in 1939, the U.S. Coast Guard quickly tore down the building, which would have required costly expenditures for repairs and modernization. The original plan was to replace the lighthouse with a steel skeleton tower, but instead a disused 1881 lighthouse that served as a rear range light on Crane’s Beach in Ipswich, Massachusetts was dismantled and barged, minus its brick lining, to Edgartown. The relocated forty-five-foot cast-iron tower was soon in service at Edgartown and remains an active aid to navigation today, showing an automated flashing red light every six seconds.

Uploaded

August 15th, 2017

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags