Boon Island
Encyclopedia
Gulf of Maine
The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America.It is delineated by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and Cape Sable at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast. It includes the entire coastlines of the U.S...
6 miles (10 km) off the town of York
York, Maine
York is a town in York County, Maine, United States at the southwest corner of the state. The population in the 2000 census was 12,854. Situated beside the Atlantic Ocean on the Gulf of Maine, York is a well-known summer resort. It is home to three 18-hole golf clubs, three sandy beaches, and...
on the Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
coast. The island is approximately 300 by 700 feet (90 by 210 m) in size, and is the site of Boon Island Light
Boon Island Light
Boon Island Light is located on the 300x700 foot Boon Island off the southern coast of Maine, United States, near Cape Neddick. Boon Island Light has the distinction of being the tallest lighthouse in both Maine and New England at 133 feet. The lighthouse has a focal plane at 137 feet above mean...
, the tallest lighthouse
Lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....
in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
.
It was discovered when a coastal trading vessel, the Increase, wrecked on it in the summer of 1682. Four survivors — three white men and one Indian
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
— spent a month on the island, subsisting on fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
and gulls' eggs. One day they saw smoke rising from Mount Agamenticus
Agamenticus
The Mount Agamenticus region covers nearly 30,000 acres in the southern Maine towns of Eliot, Ogunquit, South Berwick, Wells and York. It is now a park reservation which provides habitat for wildlife and a venue for recreation....
several miles away in York, so they built a fire to attract attention to their plight. The Indians at Mount Agamenticus saw the smoke from the island and the castaway
Castaway
A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a deserted island, either to evade their captors or the world in general. Alternatively, a person or item can be cast away, meaning rejected or discarded...
s were soon rescued. Seeing their survival as a boon
Boon
-Places:* Boon Township, Warrick County, Indiana, United States of America* Boon Township, Michigan, USA* Boon Lake Township, Minnesota, USA* Boon Lay, Singapore* Boon Tat Street, Singapore* Boon Keng MRT Station, Singapore-People:...
granted by God, the men dubbed it Boon Island, an ironic name for what poet Celia Thaxter
Celia Thaxter
Celia Laighton Thaxter was an American writer of poetry and stories. She was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.-Life and work:...
called "the forlornest place that can be imagined."
More famous was the shipwreck on December 11, 1710 of the British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
merchant ship, Nottingham Galley. All fourteen crewmen aboard survived the initial wreck, however two died from their injuries and another two drowned attempting to reach the mainland on an improvised raft
Raft
A raft is any flat structure for support or transportation over water. It is the most basic of boat design, characterized by the absence of a hull...
. The remaining ten crewmen managed to stay alive despite winter conditions with no food and no firewood for twenty four days, until finally rescued. They resorted to cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
which gave the incident a notoriety that it retains even today. It is said that after this disaster, local fishermen began leaving barrels of provisions on Boon Island in case of future wrecks. The harrowing story was fictionalized by Kenneth Roberts in his 1956 novel Boon Island.
A wooden day beacon
Beacon
A beacon is an intentionally conspicuous device designed to attract attention to a specific location.Beacons can also be combined with semaphoric or other indicators to provide important information, such as the status of an airport, by the colour and rotational pattern of its airport beacon, or of...
was erected in 1799 but lasted only five years. Fierce storms repeatedly scour Boon Island, which has an elevation of 14 feet (4.3 m) above sea level at its highest point. Violent seas can heave boulder
Boulder
In geology, a boulder is a rock with grain size of usually no less than 256 mm diameter. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive....
s across its surface, demolishing structures. A stone day beacon was constructed. In 1811, a stone lighthouse was built which stood 32 feet above the water, then rebuilt in 1831 to stand 49 feet. But damage from the elements was relentless. Consequently, in 1854–1855 the tallest lighthouse in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
was built — 133 feet (40 m) of massive granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
blocks at a cost of US$25,000. It had a focal plane of 137 feet (42 m). Keepers
Lighthouse keeper
A lighthouse keeper is the person responsible for tending and caring for a lighthouse, particularly the light and lens in the days when oil lamps and clockwork mechanisms were used. Keepers were needed to trim the wicks, replenish fuel, wind clockworks and perform maintenance tasks such as cleaning...
willing to live in such a desolate place were few, arriving and departing in steady succession. Only one man seemed to thrive there; William W. Williams stayed 27 years and lived past the age of 90.
In 1978, two lightkeepers on the island had to retreat from a powerful winter storm. They took shelter in the light chamber while the seas and wind demolished all other structures on the island. Water rose five feet up the tower and dislodged a number of its segments. Next day, they were rescued by helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
. The tower was repaired and automated, no longer requiring a resident keeper. It is now powered by solar power
Solar power
Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, has been harnessed by humans since ancient times using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar radiation, along with secondary solar-powered resources such as wind and wave power, hydroelectricity and biomass, account for most of the available...
.
In February 1944, the Empire Knight, a 428-foot (130 m) British freight ship, ran aground at Boon Island and later broke into two sections. The stern section, which included the ship's cargo holds, sank in approximately 260 feet (80 m) of water, one and one half miles (2–3 km) from the Island. In August 1990, the United States Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
became aware of the existence of a plan of stowage dating from 1944 for the ship indicating that 221 flasks (7,620 kg) of mercury
Mercury (element)
Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...
may have been loaded onto the vessel. Investigation revealed that such flasks had been placed on the ship but had since deteriorated, releasing the mercury. An estimated 16,000 pounds (7¼ t) of mercury remain unrecovered and is believed to have settled in the low point of the cargo hold.
In May 2000, the U.S. Coast Guard leased Boon Island Lighthouse to the American Lighthouse Foundation (ALF) for the restoration and preservation of the historic isolated sea sentinel.
In an effort to raise funds to restore and maintain the remote lighthouse, a fictional lighthouse nation declared its independence as The Republic of Boon Island on April 1, 2003.