Matinicus Rock, remote light and haven to protected puffins and other seabirds, is notorious for high seas and inaccessibility.
So it’s no surprise that efforts to rebuild a boat ramp at the former U.S. Coast Guard station there have been thwarted by weather. For years the wooden ways on barren Matinicus Rock have been battered and broken up by storms, and a calm day at “The Rock” is a rare thing.
Matinicus Rock is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the latest plan is to install two steel I-beams with an attached pressure-treated walkway on a side of the island slightly sheltered by a couple of reefs. Prock Marine of Rockland has barged the pre-fabricated ramp to Matinicus Rock several times, only to be forced to turn back by the restless sea.
“They’ve made numerous attempts but it’s just too rough,” said Brian Benedict, deputy manager for the Petit Manan Wildlife Refuge. In that role he is responsible for 47 islands, and Matinicus Rock is the least accessible of the lot. “It’s one of the hardest places on the coast to build a structure. It’s amazing, the forces of nature out there. It’s a very tough place to land,” he said.
A ramp installed three years ago has already been destroyed by storms. Twenty-foot breaking waves are not uncommon.
With puffins already arriving for nesting season on the Rock, Benedict said it’s probably too late to install the ramp this season. Razorbills and black guillemots have been sighted, and terns are expected. Any construction would disturb the birds and is therefore prohibited, he said. The $120,000 federal project calls for anchoring the ramp with three-by-five-by-ten-foot granite blocks to be barged from the mainland. Along with the blocks, engineers hope to anchor the ramp to bedrock.
Gary Neville, in charge of the job for Prock, said the new ramp has been designed by the Kleinschmidt firm of Pittsfield. He believes it will be more rugged than previous ramps, and could last 20 to 30 years. He expects installation will take two weeks. “The problem is the swells offshore.” Even on days where it’s calm in Rockland, there can be four-foot waves every 45 seconds at the Rock, as measured by weather buoys. He expects the ramp will have to wait till fall.
A major reason for rebuilding the ramp is to provide access for the National Audubon Society, which has been monitoring puffins on the Rock for over a century. Each year the society puts four to six people on the island between May and September to observe and record data on bird life. These volunteers live in a small Audubon house and use the lightkeeper’s house as well. There is also a boathouse at the site of the ramp, or skidway.
Matinicus Rock, 25 miles from Rockland, has twin granite light towers; one of them remains in use. The light station dates to 1827, making it one of the oldest in Maine. The first wooden towers didn’t hold up under the Rock’s severe weather conditions, and even masonry buildings have been swept away by gales, when seas crash across the entire island.
The most famous legend of the Rock involves Abbie Burgess, 17, a keeper’s daughter who kept the light burning during a January storm in 1856. Her father, Samuel Burgess – the keeper – was away. Was he on the mainland buying medicine for his sick wife, or was he drinking in a Rockland tavern? History doesn’t tell us. Burgess was fired in 1861. In any case, Abbie Burgess apparently saved her mother and younger sisters by moving them to a more secure building on the Rock. Then she went to save her chickens, “becoming convinced, as the gale increased, that unless they were brought into the house they would be lost.”
Burgess wrote that, knee-deep in water, she was able to save most of her chickens and return to the house. “But I was none too quick, for at that instant, my little sister, standing at the window, exclaimed, ‘Oh look, look there. The worst sea is coming.’ That wave destroyed the old dwelling and swept the Rock.”
The Coast Guard maintains the working lighthouse, automated in 1983, using a helicopter pad for access.