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Rockland Breakwater, Maine

Harbour Lights Limited Edition HL248
Restoration Series

Maine's Rockland Harbor, made an ideal seaport for merchant sailing vessels. It became one of the busiest waterways in the 19th Century. A lighthouse keeper at Owls Head, which marks the outer entrance to the port, reported that 21,000 ships entered Rockland Harbor in a single year.

The unprotected harbor needed protection from the easterly winds and a breakwater was completed in 1902. Stretching almost a mile into the harbor, the breakwater calmed the seas, but mariners now needed a permanent lighthouse to mark the edifice. Officials designed the charming Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse, placing a square tower on a fog signal building and illuminating it with a 4th-order Fresnel lens.

After its automaton in 1964, the lighthouse began to fall into disrepair and less than 10 years later, the Coast Guard announced that they were going to destroy the sentinel. However, lighthouse preservationists and local residents formed a group to save the historic beacon and to restore it to its original grandeur.

In the Summer of 1999, members of the Friends of Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse scraped and repainted the exterior with the help of sailors from a visiting US Navy destroyer, working to preserve this active aid to navigation.

Our sculpture of Rockland Breakwater, the second in our Restoration Series, shows the lighthouse as it appeared during the complete renovation of its interior. 

Harbour Lights will donate $5 from the sale of each sculpture to the preservation efforts for Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse.

Click on each image below to view a larger size in a new window.

Photos by Paul L. Brady  © Harbour Lights

  December 13, 2001