Publick Vendue,
At WARREN's Auction Room, in PLYMOUTH:
at Ten o'clock this morning. WILL
be Sold, a quantity of bar lead, boxes of glass,
6 × 8. English Shovels and Tongs, bridle-Bits,
and a variety of other articles of Hard-Ware.
Also, a few Anvils at private sale.
Only one instrument signed by Warren is known to survive; it is a wooden surveying compass (fig. 61) in the Streeter Collection of Weights and Measures at Yale University. The instrument, which appears to have been made from walnut, has a compass card with the following inscription around the central medallion: "Made and sold by BENJAMIN WARREN Plymouth New Engd."
Figure 61.—Wooden surveying compass made by Benjamin Warren (c. 1740-c. 1800) of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and detail of the compass card. The compass, made of cherry wood, is 12 in. long and has a diameter of 6 in. In Streeter Collection of Weights and Measures, Yale University.
Figure 62.—Detail of card, Warren surveying compass shown in figure 61.
The medallion (fig. 62) encloses a harbor scene with a brigantine of the 1740 period off a promontory on which is prominently situated a lighthouse with a smaller building partly visible at the left. The lighthouse is unusual in construction in that it features twin towers rising from a large rectangular wooden building.
As far as can be determined from available records, the only lighthouse in America of this period having such construction was the noted Gurnet Light, which was built at the tip of Duxbury Beach in Plymouth Bay in 1768. D. Alan Stevenson[116] relates that the Governor's Council of Massachusetts, when it decided in 1768 to erect the Gurnet Lighthouse at Plymouth, adopted a novel plan to distinguish it from other American lighthouses. "This consisted of double lights set horizontally in the same structure. A timber house built at a cost of £660, 30' long and 20' high, had a lanthorn at each end to contain two four-wick lamps.
"In 1802 fire destroyed the house but the merchants of the town promptly subscribed to replace it by temporary lights, as the Government had no immediate funds at its disposal. An Act of Congress of 1802 allotted $2500 for building another set of twin lights and reimbursing the merchants for their expenditure.
"Though the idea of twin lights at Plymouth seemed an excellent distinction from a single navigation light shown at Barnstable harbor in the vicinity, they proved not entirely advantageous and a sea captain blamed them for causing his shipwreck. He had seen the light from only one tower and identified it with confidence as the Barnstable light; apparently, from a particular direction one tower hid the other. But local prejudice in favor of retaining the twin lights as a distinction prevailed until 1924 when, at last, opposition ceased to the recommendation which the Lighthouse Board expressed frequently that a single light would be preferable."