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Few cities in America can boast maritime history comparable to that of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Its glory days as a leading whaling center are long past, but the city still has a fishing fleet of over 200 vessels and a waterfront busy with cargo and ferry traffic.
The city in recent years has restored and relighted two of their lighthouses — Palmer’s Island Light and Butler Flats Light — and they may soon be adding a third. The tower and lantern atop Fort Rodman at Clark’s Point has languished in near ruins in recent years and has had a regular slot on Lighthouse Digest’s Doomsday List. Its future looks much brighter.
Clark’s Point is at the entrance to New Bedford Harbor, extending southward from the city into Buzzards Bay. A wooden beacon was erected at Clark’s Point by local merchants in 1797. In 1800 the citizens petitioned the federal government to take over the lighthouse, and asked that “a certain number of buoys may be placed in Buzzards Bay, for the safety of the navigation of the same.” The petition was approved, but the lighthouse was subsequently destroyed by fire. In 1803, a new petition was presented, “praying that a lighthouse may be erected upon Clark’s Point... in lieu of a lighthouse formerly built on the said Point, which was consumed by lightning some time in the summer of the present year.”
A new 42-foot octagonal stone tower was built in 1804. The workers who raised the new beacon celebrated with a 100-gallon pot of chowder, according to historian Edward Rowe Snow. The first keeper of the lighthouse also built the first keeper’s dwelling at the station.
Henry M. Smith, who became keeper in 1842, was a woodcarver of billetheads and figureheads for New Bedford’s whaling fleet. Smith was replaced by his nephew, Amos C. Baker, a former whaling captain, in 1872. Baker’s son, Amos C. Baker, Jr., took over as keeper in 1879. The younger Baker went to sea as a cabin boy at age 12 and, like his father, eventually became a captain. In 1862, as third mate on the bark Stafford, Baker had his leg broken in two places by a whale and spent 80 days on his back. By 1874 he had become the captain of the bark A.R. Tucker. He became lighthouse keeper at Clark’s Point after his second voyage as captain, a trip which lasted 29 months.
New Bedford was an important stop on the Underground Railroad that helped many slaves find freedom. Edward Rowe Snow wrote that the vessel that brought supplies to the lighthouses in the area smuggled a woman slave and her two children, a girl and a boy, to Clark’s Point Light in the 1850s. The family was given refuge in New Bedford, and the boy grew to be a well-known hack driver called “Charlie” in the city for many years, according to Snow.
Construction began in 1860 on a seven-sided granite fort next to the lighthouse. The fort was designed in the 1840s by the man known as the “father of American Coastal Defense,” Major Richard Delafield, in collaboration with none other than Captain Robert E. Lee, who later gained greater fame as leader of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War.
The walls of Fort Taber, named for a mayor of New Bedford, eventually blocked the view of the light, so the lantern room and keeper’s quarters were relocated to the top of the fort in 1869. The old stone light tower stood until it was demolished in 1906.
A cushioning system was devised to protect the new light from any concussions resulting from the firing of the fort’s cannons. The cannons were never fired, so the system was never tested.
In 1898 a new lighthouse was built offshore from Clark’s Point. The establishment of Butler Flats Light, designed by famous architect and writer F. Hopkinson Smith, made Clark’s Point Light obsolete. The light on the fort was discontinued in April of 1898. Captain Amos Baker, Jr., who had been in charge of Clark’s Point Light since 1879, became the first keeper of the new lighthouse. When he died in 1911, Baker was replaced as keeper of Butler Flats Light by his son, Charles. In total, the two lights were kept by three generations of Bakers for almost 70 years.
The name of the fort was changed to Fort Rodman at the start of the Spanish-American War. The facility was mostly inactive except for its reactivation during both World Wars and some use for reserve training. It was declared surplus property in 1947, and in 1970 most of the fort property was turned over to the City of New Bedford.
The fort and lighthouse were restored in the early 1970s, only to fall victim to extensive vandalism and theft. In recent years a huge wastewater treatment facility has been built next to the fort. The plant is now fully operational, and it has cleaned up the harbor to such a degree that shellfishing is now possible in the area for the first time in decades.
In July 1997, the City of New Bedford unveiled an ambitious plan to create a public park in the Fort Rodman area. The park is now complete and includes more than a mile of paths for walking and biking, as well as a boat house, bath house and a community center. The paths have 180 degree views of the harbor. Concerts and other events will be held in the park, and there is a longer range plan to restore the fort and to establish a military museum.
And perhaps the best news of all for lighthouse lovers — city officials also plan to fully restore and relight the historic beacon on the fort. This could happen within the next year, according to city officials. The tower will be renovated and a new replica lantern will be constructed, since the old one is too badly damaged to be restored.
Even more attention will be focused on the area’s lighthouses when the American Lighthouse Foundation holds an international lighthouse conference in New Bedford in 2002. Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz has pledged that the Lightship LV-114, now known as the New Bedford, will be restored in time for the conference. Mayor Kalisz and all of the city’s officials are to be congratulated for their ongoing preservation efforts.
This story appeared in the
July 2000 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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