"Built by Gov. John Wentworth in 1771. As early as 1765, while Benning Wentworth was Governor, a petition was presented by sundry inhabitants of Portsmouth setting forth the necessity of a light-house at some suitable place near the mouth of Piscataqua Harbor. A committee was appointed to examine the matter, and a sum was appropriated for the erection of such a building, but being entirely insufficient, nothing more was done. In April 1771, Gov. John Wentworth made an earnest appeal to the Provincial Assembly to have enough appropriated to keep at least a lantern lighted at the head of the mast that supports the flagstaff in the Castle, or Fort, saying in the appeal: 'Every future expiring Cry of a drowning Mariner upon our coast, will bitterly accuse the unfeeling Recusant that wastes that Life to save a paltry unblessed Shilling.' A sum was accordingly granted; but in December of the same year, the governor announced that having found this mode of lighting impracticable, he had himself exceeded the grant, and caused the needed edifice to be erected. The debt thus incurred was paid the next year. In 1789 the light-house was ceded by the State to the United States. In 1854 it was remodeled and cut down, in order to distinguish it from the light-house on Whalesback."

Excerpted from The Portsmouth Guide Book, 1896, by Sarah Haven Foster.

Inscription reads, "Light House. N. Castle."