The Bostonian Society Publications, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint), Society Bostonian

There may be an impression that The Graves were so called because of many lives lost there, that does not appear to have been the fact. The name is found on a chart as early as 1687, and it has been thought that the ledges were named after Admiral Thomas Graves, * who, in 1643, commanded the Tryal, the first Boston ship, and comparatively few vessels seem to have been wrecked on them.

Unfortunately, lighthouses and like devices are merely aids to navigation. They cannot prevent storms or eliminate marine disasters, and shipwrecks have oc curred in and about the harbor notwithstanding the precautions of the government. Indeed, it would almost appear that the risk of ocean travel has kept pace with the improvement in the instrumentalities of navigation. It was very recently that the government undertook to dig the channel in Broad Sound which made The Graves Light a necessity. Until that work was done - for more than two centuries in fact - the main entrance to Boston Harbor lay between Point Allerton and The Brewsters, which serves to show why the town of Hull, with the long stretch of Nantasket Beach, and the bight of Stony Beach, connecting Point Allerton with the village and swept by northeast storms.

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