After our morning of whale and bird watching outside Bay Bulls, we drove back north to
Cape Spear, the easternmost land in North America. Cape Spear is the finger of land at the far right center on this map.
On the way to Cape Spear, we stopped briefly in Petty Harbour on Maddox Cove for some picture taking; this tiny harbor is accessible by the narrow opening in the breakwater that shields the moorage. Unlike many of the harbors on the Avalon Peninsula, this one faces northeast, open to the worst of winter's winds.
We were again lucky with weather - when we arrived at Cape Spear the wind was blowing, but it was warm enough to shed our jackets.
The Cape Spear lighthouse was first built in 1836, as a stone tower with a frame house for the light keeper's family built around it. It is the oldest surviving lighthouse in Newfoundland. The same family, the Cantwells, have been keepers of the light since 1846, with each generation assuming the duties in turn. I imagine that today's supervisor of the fully automated light has a much easier job than his great grandfathers did - they had to clean the lamp every day, climb the stairs toting heavy cans of oil, and keep watch through the night to ensure the light kept burning. The current lighthouse, built of concrete in 1955, houses the modern light that was installed in the old lighthouse in 1912.
As we walked around the cape, we marveled at the tenacity of some of the plants - this blue flag iris is managing to survive in a most precarious position.
The coastline here, as with most of the Avalon Peninsula, is very rugged, with constant wash of waves and wind shaping the great mound of rock that makes up the land. The colors of the water ranged from deep blue to icy turquoise on this nice sunny day.
During World War II the country of Newfoundland cooperated with both the Americans and the British to man gun batteries designed to keep the port of St. John's safe from enemy incursions. The guns have rusted and the lifting mechanism is long gone, but the bunkers survive, and are cold and dank.
Looking northwest from Cape Spear, the entrance to St. John's Harbour is visible as a low spot to the left of Cabot's Tower atop Signal Hill - just barely visible in the center left of this picture of St. John's Bay.
The next day, we toured Signal Hill (so named by the British in the late 1700's, but popularly still called by its original name of "The Lookout"). From the early 1700's through 1962, spotters would watch from the top of the hill and signal down to the businesses along the wharves when an incoming ship was seen. Each company had its own flag that would be run up the pole by the spotter and seen by watchers down below in the harbor so they could prepare for the arrival of one of their ships.
Cabot Tower was built in 1897-1900 to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's landing in Newfoundland. St. John's Harbour is completely landlocked except for a narrow entrance protected by Signal Hill on the north and a smaller hill on the south. At the Battle of Signal Hill in 1762, the French ceded St. John's to the British. In 1901, Gugliemo Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless radio transmission here, sent from Cornwall, UK.
The narrows are 600 feet across, with just a 200-foot-wide, 35-foot-deep shipping channel. The entrance is marked by a light on Cahill point, which was protected by gun batteries during WWII. The old concrete bunkers are all that is left of these gun placements, but the lighthouse remains active to the present.
The harbour itself is quite small, 1.2 miles long and only half a mile wide at its widest. Approximately 1200 commercial ships visit this harbor every year. Looking down from Signal Hill, one can see the entire harbor, all of downtown St. John's, and beyond. Since the mid-1700's, gun batteries have been placed around the hill to protect the harbor. Several of these are recreated by Parks Canada as part of the Signal Hill National Historic site.
This is the view of the eastern end of the harbor and downtown St. John's, which marches up the hillside with a convoluted series of narrow roads - clearly a city that was built before the advent of the automobile. The church in the upper center of the photo is the cathedral of St. John the Baptist, which will be featured in the next post to this blog.
Beautiful just beautiful.
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