New London, CT

Est. and built 1909
Tower is 58 fett high

This is one of your Lighthouse Guide's favorites in all of New England. And what a strange sight to see, like Jonathan Swift's flying island of Laputa rising from the water and lifting into the sky.

Jeremy's Lighthouse Guide #12

This 58-foot-tall lighthouse owes its distinctive French Second Empire styling to wealthy neighbors who wanted a structure in keeping with the elegance of their own homes. The stately brick building with its mansard roof makes a striking picture near the entrance to New London Harbor at the extreme eastern end of Long Island Sound.

The best-known part of this station's lore is the infamous spectre known as "Ernie." It's been claimed that in the 1920s a keeper learned that his wife had run off with the captain of the Block Island ferry. Distraught, the keeper jumped from the roof of the lighthouse to his death, the story goes. Since then, doors have been known to open and close mysteriously, decks have swabbed themselves, televisions have turned themselves off, and the fog horn seems to turn on and off for no reason. Securely tied boats have mysteriously been set adrift.

Coast Guard crews lived at the lighthouse from 1939 until its automation in 1987. The Coasties worked in three-man shifts, with three weeks at the lighthouse followed by six days on shore. Somebody once explained why there were always three men at the lighthouse at one time -- if two men had a fight, there had to be a third to break it up. The crewmen were occasionally driven to distraction by the smells of freshly mown lawns and barbecues wafting from the mainland, as well as by the distant sight of young women on a nearby beach.

Today the lighthouse is leased to the New London Ledge Lighthouse Foundation. This group has done much restoration of the building's interior. The plan is to turn the building into a combination museum and bed and breakfast. You can see the lighthouse from the shores of New London and Groton, and in the summer months Project Oceanology in Groton runs tours of the lighthouse – see their web site.

Click for a complete HISTORY of this lighthouse.

Copyright 2004 by Jeremy D'Entremont,New England Lighthouses
Photos are the property of the author and may not be used without permission.
Photos above from Jeremy D'Entremont.