Maugher Beach Lighthouse

The current Maugher Beach Lighthouse (Maugher Beach II, built 1941) is an octagonal concrete tower, white with a red lantern, still standing and operational as an automated, solarized aid-to-navigation on McNabs Island at the inner entrance to Halifax Harbour. The original 1814 granite Martello tower it replaced was demolished in 1945. The earlier history of the station follows below.

Maughers Beach Lighthouse stands at the end of a curving white sand beach on the west side of McNabs Island, at the inner entrance to Halifax harbour. The beach was named after Joshua Maugher (pronounced"Major"), a rum distiller and powerful merchant from early Halifax who used the beach to dry fish. It is also popularly known as "Hangman's Beach" because of its use by the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars to hang the bodies of executed mutineers as a warning to crews of ships entering the harbour that this was a port where they had better behave themselves.

In 1814, the British army began building a stout round granite Martello tower at the end of the beach to house a small cannon battery to defend the harbour entrance. The tower took fourteen years to complete, but as early as 1815, lights were shown at the site when naval ships were expected. In 1826, the provincial legislature decided that a permanent light was needed to help ships into the inner harbour, and voted 1500 pounds for a lighthouse. To save money, the Lieutenant Governor persuaded the military to permit the placement of a lantern room on top of the martello tower, instead of building a separate lighthouse. The Ordnance Board agreed, as long as the light didn't obstruct the cannons in what came to be called Sherbrooke Tower. "Whether the two functions were compatible was never tested, fortunately perhaps," noted a sceptical Parks Canada historian.