Summary
Our ACONS (A Celebration of Nantucket Sound) webinar with historian and author A. Bowdoin Van Riper (Martha’s Vineyard Museum) explores the history of Martha's Vineyard lighthouses on the shores of Nantucket Sound. Cape Poge Light, Edgartown Harbor Light, and East Chop Light. Their stories are threads in the larger story of Martha's Vineyard . . . and of Nantucket Sound.
The waters between Cape Cod and the Islands were already a busy shipping lane when the first lighthouse on the south side of the channel—Brant Point Light—was established in 1746. At the peak of the “Age of Sail” in the mid-19th century, 40-50,000 ships a year transited Nantucket Sound, and more than two dozen lighthouses and lightships helped them navigate it. This webinar welcomes guest speaker A. Bowdoin Van Riper (Martha’s Vineyard Museum) to tell the story of three of those lighthouses, built between 1801 and 1879 on the Nantucket Sound shore of Martha’s Vineyard: Cape Poge Light, Edgartown Harbor Light, and East Chop Light. Their stories are threads in the larger story of Martha’s Vineyard . . . and of Nantucket Sound.