Cape Race Lighthouse

Friday, September 1, 2023

Hi Blog!

For the past few days we had been watching Hurricane Franklin make its way up the East Coast. We were worried it might hit us here on the East Coast of Newfoundland. Luckily for us, Franklin turned east and went out to sea. Unluckily for us, the winds that pushed Franklin along also brought torrential rainfall that spread from west to east all over Newfoundland. On Thursday, we knew there was no escaping the deluge, so we hunkered down, worked on garden plans for the new house, and put on a big pot of lobster chowder. By the time Friday morning came, most of the weather had moved out. 

Since so much rain fell, we decided to put off hiking more of the East Coast Trail for another day, to let the trails dry out. Instead, we set our sights on the Cape Race Lighthouse. 

In order to get out to Cape Race, we had to drive through the Mistaken Point Ecological Preserve. We had stopped at the Edge of Avalon Visitor Center the other day and learned the only way to visit Mistaken Point and see the fossil beds was to sign up for a 6 km hike with a park ranger and 10 other hikers. Oh, by the way, you need to bring an extra pair of socks on the hike, since you are not allowed to walk on the fossil rocks with your boots on. As fun as that sounded, the timing of the group hike just didn't work for our schedule.

The drive out to Cape Race was spectacular. We drove through miles of sub-alpine barrens over rolling hills with raging streams between the hills. The recent rains turned these normally placid streams into whitewater rapids.

One thing we learned in our time in Newfoundland is that Newfies have a sense of humor. Nothing draws your attention to a narrow bridge crossing like a boot on a pole!

Cape Race, the southeast tip of Newfoundland, has long been an important navigational point. For vessels bound to North America from England, the cape was often their first landfall, so it is not surprising that a lighthouse, fog alarm, telegraph station, and wireless station were all established there.

The name Cape Race is thought to come from the original Portuguese name for this cape, "Raso", meaning flat or low-lying. The Cape appeared on early sixteenth century maps as Cabo Raso and its name may derive from a cape of the same name at the mouth of the Tagus River in Portugal. 

Cape Race Lighthouse was designated a national historic site in 1974 and a Recognized Federal Heritage Building in 1990. The Myrick Wireless Interpretive Center, a replica of the original Cape Race Marconi Station, provides visitors a chance to learn about the multifaceted history of Cape Race. The center is named for the Myrick family who served as light eepers, fog alarm engineers, telegraphers, and wireless operators at Cape Race between 1874 and 2007.

The Cape Race Lighthouse is a 95 feet tall reinforced concrete cylindrical shaft, topped by a circular lantern with a dome roof. Built in 1907, this landfall light was the first lighthouse in Canada to be built with reinforced concrete and its lantern houses a very rare hyper-radial Fresnel lens. The lens is 17 feet tall -- three times as tall as a person, and much, much larger than the largest of the other Fresnel lighthouse lenses we have seen.  Other than at Cape Race, this type of massive lens can be found in Portugal, Brazil, Hawaii, Pakistan, Scotland, Ireland and the Faroe Islands.

Between 1866 and 1904 (when a previous model of lighthouse was used at the site) 94 ships carrying 2,000 people were lost at, or near, Cape Race. The SS Assyrian was one of those ships. Her anchor now rests next to the lighthouse.

Visitors are not permitted in the lighthouse for health and safety reasons. The lens is floated on about seven gallons of mercury (now known to be a highly toxic heavy metal). The entire system weighs 20 tons, but because the lens sits on a mercury pool, it takes just a quarter-horsepower motor to revolve the lens around the single stationary bulb inside.

After observing the lighthouse from every possible angle, we drove over to the Myrick Wireless Interpretation Center. The museum highlights the earliest days of wireless communication and telegraphy in Newfoundland, when Cape Race was one of the busiest Marconi stations in North America. The Marconi station at Cape Race was the first land station to answer Titanic’s distress call, helping to coordinate the rescue effort for survivors of the fateful voyage.  

We packed a picnic lunch and dined in the shadow of the lighthouse. After lunch, we drove back out Cape Race Road. There are a couple beaches which are not part of the Mistaken Point Ecological Preserve. There are still several occupied properties along the beach, but this small cottage was not one of them.

As we got closer to the beach, we weren't sure we would be able to make it onto the gravel. All the recent rain had swollen the creek leading to the beach. Luckily, Kathy found a makeshift bridge to cross the raging river.

Massive amounts of gravel cover the beach. As the glaciers melted, they left behind loads of glacial moraine. The streams bring the rocks down to the ocean and the ocean picks them up and puts them back on the beach.

We made a couple stops in Portugal Cove South to see if we could find any sea glass.  This old boat just begged to be photographed.

We did find a few pieces of sea glass, but the surf in this southern part of the Avalon Cove is very rough. All the pieces of sea glass we found were very tiny. 

 

The weather should improve the next couple of days and we hope to hike more of the East Coast Trail. Stay tuned!