Built on a shoal extending from Navy Island to mark a dangerous turn into the port of St. Andrews, Navy Bar Lighthouse first displayed its fixed white light on October 17, 1904. The white, rectangular dwelling, with a red octagonal iron lantern centered atop its hipped roof, originally stood atop a steel-pile foundation, but when the piles were seriously injured by ice, the lighthouse was placed on a rectangular wooden cribwork, twenty-two feet from its original location, in 1905. A fog bell and iron boat davits were added to the station in 1907.

C.L. McKean built the lighthouse under a $2,025 contract, while Messrs. Gould, Shapley & Muir provided the steelwork for the foundation for $2,071. The cost of constructing the wooden cribwork pier, which measured fifty-four feet long by thirty feet wide and was twenty-three feet high, came to $6,478.

The Canadian Coast Guard burned down Navy Bar Lighthouse in 1967. Some feel the removal of the lighthouse was in preparation for the Queen Mother’s visit to St. Andrews that year, as the structure was considered an eyesore.

Keepers: Theobald Rooney (1906 – 1921), Carl Cronk (1921), T.H. McAlenan (1921), R.C. Sharkey (1921), B.F. Doughty (1921 – 1928), J.W. Doughty (1928 – at least 1937), Frank McAllenan ( – 1966).

References

1. Annual Report of the Department of Marine, various years.

A lighted bell buoy marks the shoal today.

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