Cape Roseway Lighthouse, McNutts Island, Shelburne, NS - Coastal Lighthouses on Waymarking.com

Built 1788, rebuilt 1959.
Tower Height - 048ft
Height Above Water - 111ft
Characteristic Flashing white

Cape Roseway on McNutt's Island, N.S. is the site of an early-established light (1788) marking the entrance to Shelburne Harbour. The first lighthouse built at Cape Roseway in 1788 was preceded in Canada by only two others - one at Louisbourg (1733) and another at Sambro island (1758) near Halifax. Like them, the 92-foot octagonal Cape Roseway lighthouse was built with locally cut stone in "the old world style"

From its lighting in 1788 and up to the recent past, the Cape Roseway lighthouse guided the comings and goings of the newly-built wooden sailing ships, the fishing vessels, and other assorted marine traffic in the area. Unfortunately, the stone tower was struck by lightning in 1959 and the ensuing fire destroyed its heavy oak timbers giving support inside.

Exterior wooden clapboards (in place by 1835 at least), had formed a protective sheath around the stone but were destroyed as well. Intense heat caused large cracks in the shell-based mortar, and some of the granite blocks were dislodged. Concluding that the tower was beyond economical repair, the Canadian Coast Guard had it demolished to make way for the new and present one on the same site - a 48-foot octagonal concrete tower of standard plan.

A number of other building additions and changes have been effected at Cape Roseway throughout its long history. Currently, there are three houses on site. According to Coast Guard files, one was built in 1958, and the other two apparently pre-date it by a few years at least.

Other buildings include a barn (1880), a frame building to shelter the steam fog trumpet later transformed into a storehouse, and a new fog alarm building (1916-17). When the old lighthouse was being demolished following its fire, a temporary light was set on the roof of this latter building (1960).

In 1950, an article in The Standard (a weekend newspaper supplement) noted that every 10 seconds, Cape Roseway Lighthouse sent out a 100,000 candlepower warning beam that could be seen for 18 miles on clear nights. The kerosene fueled lamps were housed in a Fresnel lens weighing 2 tons. When visibility was low, the diesel powered fog horn emitted two dismal three-second groans a minute. The light and fog horn were tended by 62 year old Otis Orchard and his assistant Nelson Goulden. Orchard lived with his wife on the island. Goulden's family lived on the mainland in Gunnings Cove. The two men worked six hour shifts and shared the maintenance work.

The lighthouse had "Six-foot walls of cut stone, strong iron doors with iron gudgeons, gun embrasures and heavy oak and hackmatack timbering recalling the days when pirates made the lighthouse their special target." (This was the stone lighthouse that burned in 1959.)

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