FOUR CANONS STAND GUARD OVER BAR HARBOR

BAR HARBOR TIMES
Observer's Notebook
June 24,  1916

The growing interest in preparedness and coast defenses lately engendered brings vividly to Maine people the panic that this section felt at the time of the Spanish War, and particularly the fancied security of Bar Harbor's millionaire summer colony after four antiquated guns were send down here.  There have been many instances when an unloaded gun had done a great amount of persuasion, but there probably no instance in history when the fears of an entire town were so greatly allayed by four old muzzle-loaders, one without gun-carriage, and all of them totally without ammunition or gun crews.
At the outbreak of the Spanish War in 1898, the Maine coast, with its quota of summer resorts and consequently in influential summer visitors, was thrown into the wildest of panics for fear of the visits of raiding Spanish cruisers and battleships.  Every incoming vessel told of meeting some suspicious craft with rakish funnels and mysterious appearance, and many families kept their valuables packed up ready for instant flight into the interior.  The two cruisers Minneapolis and Columbia kept scouting up and down the coast, but instead of allaying the fears of the Maine people, their presence even increased the terror felt.
Persistent import unities were made to the war and Navy departments for protection, especially for the summer residents of Bar Harbor.  With a number of influential summer residents making demands upon official Washington, their requests could not be entirely neglected, and so in the spring of 1898 four guns were shipped to Bar Harbor, and lengthy communications made from the department as to the artillery that had been sent down.
The summer colony felt itself perfectly safe with the arrival of four cannon.  Just what effect those four pieces of artillery would of had in the event of a Spanish cruisers appearance in the offing is problematical.  The four cannon were relics that had passed through the Civil War, four antiquated old muzzle-loaders, one without a vestige of gun-carriage, with absolutely no shells, powder, men to man them, or anything else.  The department had its little joke on the fashionable summer resort, never expecting, probably, that its shipment would be taken seriously.
The four guns lay around on the wharf for some weeks in the rain, and were finally taken to various points of vantage.  One was placed at Schooner Head, at the entrance to the harbor, where it may be seen yet.  Another was placed on the island of Egg Rock, at the harbor's mouth, and another at Turtle Island, still further down the bay.  Just what happened to the forth, the one without the carriage, nobody remembers.  It was seriously proposed to place it on Green Mountain, 1527 feet above the sea level, and at the rear of the village, but nobody seemed to be willing to engineer the attempt.  The various pieces of artillery have been standing out in the sun, rain,  and snow ever since the days of Cervera and Santiago.  They are as ready to do their duty in repelling an invading army today as they were in the days of the war with Spain - just about as much.

(NOTE:  I have heard that the cannon that was placed at Schooner Head was placed high up on a cliff where a castle like home now stands, which you can see from the cliff by Anemone Cave.)