Old Scituate Light

We checked out Old Scituate Lighthouse recently. We love lighthouses, and we'll get to every one in the area soon enough... 

Old Scituate Lighthouse dates back to 1811, for the low-low cost of $4000. That's a lot of $5 bills to be throwing around, especially when the guy on the $5 bill was still Thomas Jeffersoning. (Editor's note: Tommy is on the $10 bill, Stephen)

We happened to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar there, and he was nice enough to pose in the foreground, provide some scale and make the lighthouse look bigger.

Steve, listen... if the article is called "Old Scituate Lighthouse," do try to not chop off part of the actual lighthouse (Editor's note: Steve claimed that the lighthouse moved at the last second when he shot it). It ain't that hard.

They need an Army Of One to hustle down and clean up the Army Of Two sign. The Army Of Two is probably the South Shore's best military story.

We'll do an article on it later, but the short version is that the lighthouse keeper's two daughters scared off a British raiding party in the War Of 1812. The British were coming to burn Scituate to the ground.

The girls thwarted that sh*t by hiding behind the dunes and playing a fife and drum. The British, thinking it was militia, turned tail and beat a red-coated retreat back to La Hogue.

The lighthouse is 25 feet tall and stands 71 feet above Sea Level.

She was deactivated in 1850, as Minot's Ledge Lighthouse made it redundant. Other than a brief reactivation when MLL was destroyed in a 1852 gale, it was inactive until 1994. It fell into disrepair, and only looks as good as it does now because of citizen effort. Her light still shines, as a private aid to navigation.

If you can't wait for our Army Of Two article to drop and want to research it yourself, the two sisters are known as either The Army Of Two, The American Army Of Two or The Lighthouse Army Of Two.

If The Bates Sisters aren't enough history for you, the lighthouse is also near where the USS Chesapeake and the HMS Shannon traded hands. The U lost that one, but the dying words of Captain James Lawrence- "Don't give up the ship"- became the battle cry of the US Navy.

But wait! There's more! This is also where the Etrusco ran aground in a 1956 nor'easter. The crew were rescued, and kept in various houses around town until they could get home. The ship was stuck there for several months, before being refloated, repaired and returned to service.

It tolls for thee...