Items related to Lighthouses of Maine
Synopsis
Book by Caldwell, Bill
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About the Author
Bill Caldwell was an ardent sailor who wrote many books about Maine.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"'Why here? What mad misanthrope chose to build a lighthouse on this hostile, forsaken rock, twenty-six miles offshore in a perilous ocean?'
"Mount Desert Rock is exposed to some of the most savage seas and gales of any light on the Atlantic coast. Yet someone picked this place to erect a light to help mariners find the way to Mount Desert Island and Frenchman's and Blue Hill Bays on either side of it. And he ordered that the light be erected upon a rock barely out of the ocean. The rock is a mere chunk of volcanic outcrop, a speck in the wild Atlantic. The nearest harbor is twenty-six miles away on the mainland.
"On a calm day, you can walk every yard of this world in a few minutes; it is six hundred yards long and two hundred yards wide. On a calm day you might even feel safe and enjoy the ocean, twenty feet below the highest point on the rock at low tide.
"In a storm, however, run fast for cover--the fury of the sea submerges every inch of the rock on which the light stands. The force of those seas is incredible. In a storm of 1842, say federal records, a mammoth rock eighteen feet long, fourteen feet wide, and six feet thick, weighing fifty-seven tons, was hurled by the wild ocean as though it were a toy! In another storm a boulder weighing seventy-five tons was rolled like a hoop sixty feet by gigantic waves.
"Sail by Mount Desert Rock Light today and you are glad it is there, but you wonder about the kind of men and women who have been its keepers and how they endured life on this rock for more than 170 years."
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Lighthouses of Maine
Seller: ThriftBooks-Dallas, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0930096630I5N00
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Lighthouses of Maine
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0930096630I4N00
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Lighthouses of Maine
Published by
Gannett Books, 1986
ISBN 10: 0930096630
ISBN 13: 9780930096632
Used
paperback
First Edition
Seller: Mystery Cove Book Shop, Hulls Cove, ME, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
paperback. First Edition. Fine trade paperback. First edition, 1st printing. Heavily illustrated history in 276 pages. Seller Inventory # 167792
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Lighthouses of Maine
Seller: George Cross Books, Lexington, MA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Reprint edition. Very Good/Wraps (34178) A very good paperback. Clean, tight, unmarked. . 276. Seller Inventory # 34178