WRECKS AND MI NOT LIGHT. 



459 



the mouth of it many years until the wooden bridge * 

 was built in 1822. 



To return to the diary of Joel Willcutt we find, Sep- 

 tember I, 1815 : "Last night there was a vessel sunk off 

 Cohasset Rocks and five men drowned. Two were taken 

 off the rock alive after remaining on her spars eleven 

 hours." 



Again, December 6, 1818, Sunday: "A gale of wind 

 S. E. ; this morning there was a barque from Russia 

 named Sarah & Susan loaded with hemp and iron, on 

 Minot Ledge. At eight o'clock the upper part of the 

 ship parted from the bottom and drifted to leeward with 

 the crew hanging thereon. At one o'clock nine were 

 taken off, four others having been drowned." 



This ledge f needed to be branded as dangerous, but 

 our government was slow to erect a lighthouse upon it 

 because the rock was always covered at high tide, allow- 

 ing no time for a foundation to be built. Meanwhile the 

 luckless vessels were annually impaled upon this sharp 

 ledge or its similar neighbors. 



The business of "wrecking," that is, of saving the 

 pieces, came to be the trade of a number of Cohasset 

 citizens. The annual castaways strewn along our shore 

 from Scituate Harbor to Point Allerton gave employment 

 to many of our amphibious laborers, securmg the cargoes 

 from total destruction or saving the bits of the wreck. 



The underwriters of Boston naturally kept some Co- 

 hasseter appointed as their agent to report losses and to 

 save as much property as possible. One of the best 

 remembered underwriters' agents was Captain Nichols 

 Tower, who employed a number of Cohasset men in sav- 

 ing the cargoes of cotton upon two New Orleans vessels 

 grounded near the town, and the cargo of East India 

 merchandise upon the Massasoit. 



* The present iron bridge took its place in 1896. 



fThe name Minot probably was given to it in memory of some man who ran a 

 vessel upon it. The name has been in Cohasset families for many years. 



