Lunging Island

LUNGING ISLAND, originally called Londoner’s Island, has a rich history for a place little more than 7 acres. 

Once the home of a bustling British trading post in the 1600s, it was eyed as a potential hub in the global oil trade by the 1970s. In the early 1700s, legend has it that the pirate Blackbeard buried treasure on the island, though a team of geologists investigating for a 2001 History Channel documentary failed to unearth any. 

In the later 19th century, “Uncle” Oscar Laighton, brother to Celia, owned the island, where he built and sometimes lived in what he called Honeymoon Cottage. Oscar never married, but several couples did spend their honeymoons there. Oscar tacked up a note in the kitchen that said, “Welcome to anyone entering this house in shipwreck or trouble. Start a fire in the stove and make yourself comfortable.”

In 1973, agents of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis secured an option to make Lunging Island a docking point for a new generation of oil supertankers that would connect there via about 20 miles of pipeline to Durham Point, N.H., where Onassis proposed to build a large refinery. Despite the support of N.H. Governor Meldrim Thompson, the plan was halted by community opposition.