Talk:Nantucket Beacon

Highly questionable

Looking at the charts, and given the lack of coverage elsewhere, I think this article is quite problematic. I have looked at every chart showing Nantucket at a reasonable scale up to 1916, and exactly two of them show anything that could be construed as this range. All of the rest show the two cliff range lights and one or the other Brant Point Lights, but there's no light on the south side of the harbor. Even the charts that do show a beacon at the right spot (this one from 1848 and this one from 1879) don't show it as part of a range. Charts from 1889 on show a jetty which cuts across any possible range from the old light location.

At this point I'm tempted to combine this with the Nantucket Harbor Range Lights article, but I could use other opinions. LHF doesn't mention any of the harbor ranges, nor does D'Entremont; more surprising is that Rowlett doesn't mention a range based on the Brant Point tower either. Mangoe (talk) 14:30, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Rowlett refers to this as the "Nantucket Cliff Range (Brant Point Range) Lights", see also his link to Anderson's page with an image of the original Nantucket Cliff Range Lights and dwelling. De728631 (talk) 21:36, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

The Nantucket Cliff Range Lights are different entirely: you can see them to the west of the harbor entrance on the chart. The article on these needs a lot of expansion but they don't have any relationship to Brant Point. This is supposed to be a third range, with the front light on Brant Point and the rear light on the opposite side of the harbor (note that the rear light is supposed to be a mile away from the front, and that's about how wide the harbor is). Mangoe (talk) 21:57, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah, right. my first guess was based on the design of the towers and so I thought I had found something. De728631 (talk) 12:02, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Just found a beacon in the chart SSE of Brant Point Light, right at the C in "Nantucket". Could that be the old rear light? You said above that this is not shown as part of a range but then the Cliff Beacons aren't marked as a range either. De728631 (talk) 12:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The 1848 chart shows a light called "Old Bug Light Rear" at that location which would coincide with the "bug light" in this page. And interestingly in this general chart from 1873 there's a lighthouse at the same spot, SSE of Brant Point Light. De728631 (talk) 13:18, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Rewrite

I've managed to puzzle out enough from Snow's book to ransack the GPO reports and put something together. If anyone can find a copy of Lighthouses of New England' by Malcolm F. Willoughby, there's obviously more material there, but I don't have an opportunity right now to rustle up a copy. The main difficulty was the erroneous name given in the USCG historical page: all official sources call it the Nantucket Beacon. Mangoe (talk) 17:10, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

That's great. Good work! De728631 (talk) 18:02, 28 September 2012 (UTC)