Some 41 years after the Coast Guard removed it from the Fiddler’s Reach tower, the bronze fog bell is getting a homecoming of sorts.

Within the next couple of weeks, the Maine Maritime Museum expects to have the USCG fog bell on display. Eventually, the bell will be part of the museum’s Coast Guard exhibit, which opens June 7.

Chris Hall, curator of exhibits at the museum, said “someone at this end” will be heading in a truck to the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., to pick up the 1,259-pound piece of history.

Meanwhile, Hall said, the museum needs to find a mount for the bell’s resting place.

“It will be a permanent Coast Guard loan,” Hall said. “It just so happens that the mount at the academy was weathering. I called at the right time.”

The Range Light Keepers in Arrowsic is restoring a fog bell striking mechanism, which will also be on display at the museum for the upcoming exhibit. It will be in working order, striking another fog bell of similar size.

This mechanism with bell will be installed into the Fiddler’s Reach Fog The original Fiddler’s Reach fog bell arriving from the academy will remain at Maine Maritime Museum, as it is viewed as an artifact by the Coast Guard and cannot actually be struck.

The Coast Guard fog bell hung on a wooden beam and projected over the Kennebec River outside the Fiddler’s Reach tower on Arrowsic Island beginning in 1914.

During times of low visibility, the lighthouse keeper would manually activate the bell. A clock tower mechanism, called a striker, sat inside the tower. It consisted of large iron gears, pulleys, heavy counterweights and a mechanical timer.

The bell was in continuous use at Fiddler’s Reach until an electric foghorn automated the function in the 1950s. The Coast Guard removed the bell in 1972.

lgrard@timesrecord.com