THE CAPE RACE LIGHTHOUSE, NEWFOUNDLAND.
One of the finest and most powerful beacons in the world. It is filled with the hyperradiant apparatus, and the ray is of 1,100,000 candle-power.
One of the oldest, if not the first light to be established, was that on Sambro Island, to indicate the entrance into Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia. This signpost of the sea was set up in 1758, and fulfilled its purpose for 148 years, when it was reconstructed and fitted with the most up-to-date appliances. The white flash now bursts forth, at an elevation of 140 feet above mean high-water, from the top of a white octagonal stone and concrete tower, and is visible from a distance of seventeen miles. When it is blotted out by fog, a powerful signal is given once every ten minutes by a cotton-powder charge. Mariners, however, are cautioned against attempting to make Sambro in fog, as the shore is wild and cruel. This explosive signal is emitted rather to communicate a timely warning to vessels which have lost their way.
The two most dangerous spots in the approach to Canada, however, lie off the mainland. One is the irregular triangular island of Newfoundland; the other is a low-lying stretch of sand known as Sable Island. Both are amongst the most ill-famed graveyards in the North Atlantic, where hundreds of ships have gone to their doom. Even to-day, although both are well protected by lights, wrecks are by no means uncommon. Sable Island is stalked by the ghosts of scores of seafarers who have been the victims of some ghastly ocean tragedy upon its banks.
The island of Newfoundland lies in the jaw of the River St. Lawrence, with two narrow passages leading between the Gulf behind and the broad Atlantic. Both straits offer dangers to navigation, although in this respect that of Belle Ile, whereby the northern corner of the island is rounded, is the worse offender. Yet the most dangerous corner of the island is, not where the waterways are hemmed in, but that tongue which thrusts itself far out to sea, to terminate in the bluff headland of Cape Race. This shoreline is as serrated as a fine saw, being a succession of indentations and steep promontories, with submerged reefs running far out to sea. To the south lies that great submerged tableland, invariably curtained in fog, where mighty icebergs that have come down from the north pound and grate themselves to pieces, which throughout the shipping world is regarded with dread—the Grand Banks. This south-eastward corner of the island, by being thrust so far outwards, brings the rocky headlands into the path of the vessels plying between Europe, Canada, and New York.
The shortest route between the Old and New World extends across the northern half of the Banks, with a slight swing southwards to avoid Cape Race. So far as the great liners are concerned, they are spared this peril, inasmuch as their prescribed lanes give the cruel coast a wide berth; but all other shipping has either to swing round the headland to enter the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or strike farther north and pass through the Strait of Belle Ile. The latter route, however, is available for only five months in the year; the greater volume of the traffic skirts the southern shores of the island.
By permission of the Lighthouse Literature Mission.
CANN ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE ON THE EAST COAST OF NEWFOUNDLAND.
This is a typical example of a wooden frame building. The tower projects from the roof of the home of the lighthouse-keeper and his family.