Tabusintac is a community situated on the north side of the entrance to Miramichi Bay, between Tracadie to the north and Neguac to the south. In 1873, a square, wooden tower that stood twenty feet high was built on Crab Island to mark the entrance to the harbour at Tabusintac. This lighthouse used three mammoth flat-wick lamps set in fifteen-inch reflectors to produce a fixed red light, which could not be seen as far as a white light. Thomas Savoy was hired as the first keeper of the light.

James Mitchell, inspector of lights for New Brunswick, noted in 1874 that there had been a complaint filed against the light. An investigation showed that the keeper was not at fault as on there was a thick fog on the night mentioned in the complaint which was the reason the light could not be distinctly seen.

In 1875, Keeper Savoy was paid $100 to build a beacon light to range with the main lighthouse and more clearly mark the proper channel for entering the harbour. The beacon light exhibited a fixed white light while the main light remained a fixed red light. A heavy gale in October 1879 swept away the mast and shed used at the front light, but a new beacon was soon built.

Keeper Savoy died in 1889, and Ferdinand Robichaud was hired to look after the lights at an annual salary of $150.

The chief engineer of the Department of Marine visited the lights at Tabusintac in 1891 and concluded that the range lights were of no value where they were located due to the shallowing of the water at the harbour entrance. The engineer recommended the lights be relocated south and used as an inner range at Neguac Gully. Tenders were accordingly invited to relocate the range lights at Tabusintac to Lower Neguac. The lowest tender received for the move was $245, a sum considered excessive, so W. H. Noble was sent by the Department of Marine to move the lights, which he accomplished in October 1891 at a cost of $205.07. Lower Neguac Range Lights were activated with the opening of navigation in 1892.

The relocated front light, consisting of a lens lantern hoisted atop a sixteen-foot-tall mast that had a shed at its base, was located on the east end of the cribwork block that helped form the Lower Neguac Wharf. The mast and shed were originally painted brown, and diamond-shaped slatwork was affixed to the mast to make it conspicuous as a daymark. The fixed white light on the wharf was displayed at a height of twenty feet above high water and was visible from up to nine miles.

The companion rear light, exhibited from a wooden, enclosed tower surmounted by a lantern, was placed on the beach at Lower Neguac, 1,050 feet from the front light.

Keepers: Thomas Savoy (1873 – 1889), Ferdinand Robichaud (1889 – 1891).

References

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

Lighted buoys mark the harbour today.

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