Lighthouse

HISTORY

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, built around 280 BC, was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Damaged by earthquakes in 956 and 1303 it was abandoned after another earthquake in 1323.

The world's oldest existing lighthouse is Spain's Tower of Hercules, erected in the first century and still operational.

The Eddystone Rocks were a major shipwreck hazard for mariners sailing through the English Channel. The first lighthouse built there was an octagonal wooden structure, anchored by twelve iron stanchions secured in the rock, and was built by Henry Winstanley in the late 17th century. The light was lit on November 14, 1698. Winstanley's lighthouse was the first tower in the world to have been fully exposed to the open sea.

Winstanley's lighthouse, as modified in 1699

The first Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703 on December 8, 1703.

The cost of construction and five years' maintenance of the first Eddystone Lighthouse totaled £7,814 7s.6d, during which time dues totaling £4,721 19s.3d had been collected at one penny per ton from passing vessels.

A second Eddystone Lighthouse was completed in 1709. This proved more durable, surviving nearly fifty years. However, on the night of December 2, 1755, the top of the lantern caught fire, probably through a spark from one of the candles used to illuminate the light and the tower burnt down.

Drawing of the second Eddystone Lighthouse,

The civil engineer, John Smeaton, rebuilt the lighthouse in 1759. His tower represented a major step forward in the design of lighthouses and remained in use until 1877.

The first lighthouse in America was authorized for construction by the Massachusetts legislature at Little Brewster Island, to mark the entrance to Boston, Massachusetts, harbor on July 23, 1715. The Boston Light was ready for use by mid-September of the following year. It has guided ships since then.

A tonnage tax of 1 penny per ton charged to vessels moving in or out of Boston Harbor, paid for maintaining the light.

1729 illustration  of Boston Light

The first keeper of Boston Light was George Worthylake. He was paid £50 a year to keep the beacon lit from sundown to sunrise. Worthylake drowned, along with his wife and daughter, when returning to the island in 1718.

The stone structure weathered 60 years of lightning strikes and gale-force winds before the British Army blew up the tower and completely destroyed it during the American Revolutionary War.

The current lighthouse dates from 1783, is the second oldest working lighthouse in the United States (after Sandy Hook Lighthouse in New Jersey)

The number of men working in a lighthouse in the UK was increased from 2 to 3 following a gruesome incident in 1801 at the Smalls Lighthouse 20 miles (32 km) west of Marloes Peninsula in Pembrokeshire, Wales. One half of a duo, Thomas Griffith, died in a freak accident, and the other, Thomas Howell, placed him outside in a makeshift coffin. Stiff winds blew the box apart and Howell was driven mad by the wind causing his dead colleague's arm appear to be beckoning him.

The Bell Rock lighthouse off the east coast of Scotland is reputedly the oldest offshore lighthouse in the world. So expertly was it built that no structural changes have been made since it was built in 1811.

A lighthouse 346 ft above sea level was built in 1831 by Robert Stevenson, the grandfather of Treasure island author Robert Louis Stevenson, on Dunnet Head, Caithness, the most northerly point on British mainland.

Smeaton's Eddystone Lighthouse

A female heroine was created on September 7, 1838, when lighthouse keeper’s daughter Grace Darling rowed out to sea and saved nine people from a shipwreck on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland, NE England.

The current Cape Lookout, North Carolina, lighthouse was lit for the first time on November 1, 1859. The  lighthouse was built with a double wall structure, which made it much stronger than previous lighthouses. It was also equipped with a first-order Fresnel lens, which was the most powerful type of lens available at the time. The lens could be seen for about 19 miles (31 km) in good weather. 

The Cape Lookout lighthouse played an important role in guiding ships safely along the Outer Banks, a treacherous stretch of coastline known for its shoals and storms.  

The keeper of the Christiana Light was 105 when he died in 1862, the oldest known lighthouse keeper in United States history.

In 1881 an ice floe forced the Sharp's Island Lighthouse off its foundations, after which it floated nearly five miles down the Chesapeake—with its keepers still inside—until it ran aground, allowing the men to escape unharmed.

During the 1883 Krakatoa eruptions and resulting tsunamis, a Javanese lighthouse keeper refused to leave his post, survived after the lighthouse collapsed, lost his wife and child, and built a makeshift light just a few hours afterward so that ships wouldn't run aground.

On October 22, 1707, a British fleet, under the command of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, was returning from a successful campaign in the Mediterranean during the War of Spanish Succession. Due to navigational errors and poor weather conditions, four Royal Navy ships, including Shovell's flagship, the HMS Association, ran aground on the rocks of the Scilly Isles off the southwestern coast of England.

The disaster resulted in the loss of all four ships and more than 1,500 sailors, including Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell.  The Bishop Rock Lighthouse, which might have averted the disaster, was finally completed in 1858 and was first lit on September 1, that year. 

18th-century engraving of the disaster

Bishop Rock is the world’s smallest island with a building on it. Since 1976 it has even had a helipad at the top of the lighthouse.

Bishop Rock Lighthouse (2005) By Richard Knights, CC BY-SA 2.0, $3

From 1886 to 1902 the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor was officially a lighthouse. An electric light in its torch was visible for 24 miles.

On December 12, 1900 three lighthouse keepers mysteriously disappeared from the lighthouse on Eilian Mor, an island north of Scotland. Their logbook indicated they were frightened by a storm that hit on that day, but all other reports in the area stated the weather was clear on December 12th.

Leasowe Lighthouse was built in 1763 by The Mersey Docks and Harbour Company to guide shipping safely to the Port of Liverpool and is the oldest lighthouse built from bricks in the United Kingdom. The lighthouse was closed in 1908 and its last keeper was a Mrs. Williams, the only known female lighthouse keeper of the period.

A relief crew arrived at the Flannan Isles Lighthouse of Scotland on December 26, 1909 and discovered that the previous crew had disappeared without a trace.

In 1912 Gustaf Dalen won a Nobel Prize for an invention making unmanned lighthouses possible. Despite being blinded in an accident in 1912 Dalen went on to invent the Aga cooker.

Finland's Lågskär island lighthouse was constructed in 1920. It introduced a rotating gas lighting device, which was the first of its kind in the world.

Lågskär Lighthouse and outbuildings (2009). By Islander - Own work, CC BY 3.0, $3

FUN LIGHTHOUSE FACTS

Russia has hundreds of nuclear powered lighthouses and beacons along the Northern Shipping Route.

Source Daily Express