Contributed by ChippyAnn Kamm
The rocky ledge runs far out into the sea
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.
-H.W. Longfellow
Historian Edward Rowe Snow wrote, “Portland Head and its light seem to symbolize the state of Maine — rocky coast, breaking waves, sparkling water and clear, pure salt air.” The hundreds of thousands of people who visit this site each year would agree; Portland Head is one of the most spectacularly beautiful lighthouses in New England.
Portland, which was known as Falmouth until 1786, was America’s sixth busiest port by the 1790s. Even so, Maine had no lighthouses when 74 merchants petitioned the Massachusetts government (Maine was part of Massachusetts at the time) in 1784 for a light to mark the entrance to Portland Harbor. The deaths of two people in a 1787 shipwreck at Bangs (now Cushing) Island near Portland Head finally led to the appropriation of $750 for a lighthouse.
The project was delayed by insufficient funds, and construction didn’t progress until 1790 when Congress appropriated an additional $1,500, after the nation’s lighthouses had been ceded to the federal government.
The stone lighthouse was built by local masons Jonathan Bryant and John Nichols. The original plan was for a 58-foot tower, but when it was realized that the light would be blocked from the south it was decided to make the tower 72 feet in height instead. Bryant resigned over the change, and Nichols finished the lighthouse in January 1791.
President George Washington appointed Capt. Joseph Greenleaf, a Revolutionary War veteran, to be the first keeper. At first, Greenleaf received no salary as keeper; his payment was the right to fish and farm and to live in the keeper’s house. In 1793, officials decided to pay Greenleaf an annual salary of $160. The keeper died of a stroke in his boat on the Fore River two years later.
By 1810, the lighthouse and keeper’s house were in poor condition; the woodwork was damp and rotting. Part of the problem was that the keeper was storing a year’s supply of oil in one room, putting great stress on the floor. Repairs were made, and an outdoor oil shed was added. In 1813, a new lantern and a system of lamps and reflectors designed by Winslow Lewis were installed at a cost of $2,100. A new keeper’s house was built in 1816.
New lamps and reflectors were installed in 1850. in the following year, an inspection found much to be desired. The new reflectors were found to be badly scratched already. The house was leaky and cracking and the tower was being undermined by rats. The keeper was apparently poorly trained and had received no written instructions on the operation of the light. He had been forced to hire a man himself to train him for two days.
Improvements were made in the following years. A fourth-order Fresnel lens replaced the lamps and reflectors in 1855. A bell tower with a 1,500 pound bell was installed, the tower was lined with brick and a cast-iron spiral stairway was built.
Following the 1864 wreck of the Liverpool vessel Bohemian , in which 40 immigrants died, the light was further improved. The tower was raised 20 feet and a new second-order Fresnel lens was installed.
Capt. Joshua Strout, a native of Cape Elizabeth and a former sea captain, became keeper in 1869 for $620 per year. Strout’s wife Mary became assistant keeper at a salary of $480 per year.
A hurricane on September 8, 1869, knocked the fog bell into a ravine, nearly killing Joshua Strout. A new tower with a 2,000 pound bell and a Stevens striking mechanism was built the following year. The bell was soon replaced by a fog trumpet. In 1887, an engine for the fog signal was moved from Boston Light to Portland Head. An air-diaphragm chime horn was installed in 1938.
Joshua and Mary’s son Joseph became keeper in 1904, and he remained until 1928, ending 59 years of the Strout family at Portland Head. In 1910, Joseph Strout was quoted in the Lewiston Journal:
We’ve all got the lighthouse fever in our blood… Father was keeper before me. Joshua Freeman Strout, that was his name, and a fine old man he was too. He was named for Captain Joshua Freeman. He kept the light, too, Captain Freeman did, in the days when they burned whale oil and had sixteen lamps. When grandmother was a girl of sixteen, she worked at Cap’n Freeman’s [she was his housekeeper] and after she married and father was born, she named him Joshua Freeman Strout. Old Cap’n Freeman used to sit in a big arm chair with a coil of rope near him so if a shipwreck came sudden he would be prepared.
In his 1935 book Lighthouses of the Maine Coast and the Men Who Keep Them, Robert Thayer Sterling called Joseph Strout “one of the most popular lightkeepers of his day or any yet to come. His genial disposition, his hearty laugh, together with his good stories of the sea, won him the admiration of all who met him.”
A parrot named Billy was a well-known member of the Strout household at Portland Head for many years. When bad weather approached, Billy would tell Keeper Strout, “Joe, let’s start the horn. It’s foggy!” Billy reportedly became an avid fan of radio in his declining years and lived to be over 80.
With the completion of Halfway Rock Light in 1871, the Lighthouse Board felt that Portland Head Light had become less important. The tower was shortened by 20 feet in 1883 and the second-order lens was replaced by a weaker fourth-order lens.
This met with many complaints. A year later, the tower was restored to its former height and a second-order lens was again installed, first lighted January 15, 1885. A new Victorian two-family keeper’s house was built in 1891, on the same foundation as the 1816 one-story stone dwelling. The old stone house was reportedly moved to become a private home in Cape Cottage. The lighthouse station has changed very little since that time, except for a 1900 renovation during which many of the tower’s stones were replaced.
In his 1876 book Portland and Vicinity, Edward H. Elwell reported that a few years earlier a party had gone to Portland Head to watch the crashing waves during a storm. Two carriage drivers who had brought the group out ventured too far out on the rocks and were swept away. Their bodies were recovered several days later.
On Christmas Eve, 1886, the British bark Annie C. Maguire ran ashore on the rocks at Portland Head. The Strouts got a line to the vessel and helped all aboard, including the captain’s wife, make it safely to shore.
On New Year’s Day 1887, a storm destroyed the ship after everything of value had been removed. You can still see the rock near the lighthouse with the painted inscription: “In memory of the ship Annie C. Maguire, wrecked here, Dec. 24, 1886.”
For a time, the buildings at Portland Head Light received serious damage from practice gunfire from neighboring Fort Williams. The U.S. Lighthouse Service Bulletin of September 1, 1916, reported that “windows were forced out, finish ripped off, roof torn open,” and also reported “injury to the brickwork of the three chimneys of the double dwelling.” On one occasion two of the chimneys were completely severed at the bottom. Casings were installed to protect the chimneys.
Life at Portland Head Light was quite different from the popular image of the solitary lighthouse keeper. Constant tourists were a way of life. When Earle Benson was keeper in the 1950s, a woman walked right into the keeper’s house and sat at the kitchen table. The woman insisted that Benson and his wife were government employees, and she demanded service.
The last civilian keeper before the Coast Guard took over was Robert Thayer Sterling, author of Lighthouses of the Maine Coast and the Men Who Keep Them. Sterling, who retired in 1946, called Portland Head the most desirable of all lighthouse stations for keepers.
Electricity came to Portland Head Light in 1929. The light was dark for three years during World War II. The second-order Fresnel lens was removed in 1958 and replaced by aerobeacons.
