BEAN ROCK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 99, 28 April 1936, Page 8

BEAN ROCK.

HARBOUR LIGHT. ELECTRICAL INSTALLATION. LAYING OP- CABLE STARTED. Like a great spider laying the foundation for a fly-catching web, a scow, with a launch alongside it, crept out this morning from the southern shore of the Auckland Harbour, paying out behind it a thin thread of electric cable. At first it seemed to be making towards some point on the North Shore, but it swerved eastward, touching at last the Bean Rock lighthouse. Thus was one of the oldest and most important lights on the coast connected to-day to the mainland by a length of cable through which an electric current will throb to light the lantern.

When Bean Rock lighthouse was built by the Marine Department in 1870, a kerosene lamp of 330 candlepower was the .best lighting available, and that needed #>nstant attention lest it should go out or so coat the inner surface of the lens with smoke that it would be invisible. So, on top of a skeletal frame of iron, a comfortable octagonal cottage, surrounded by a verandah, was built. It must have beeii a pleasant home for some retired mariner who, though unable to go again to sea in sail, loved still to have salt water about him. Indeed, even in latter years, many a misanthrope, and, possibly, many a wife-weary suburban husband, has looked at the little cottage in midharbour with longing for the peace and isolation it lias seemed to offer. Triple Flash. From the first, Bean Rock has been the principal leading light into the Auckland Harbour. Its lenses are arranged so that its triple flash, three flashes at one second intervals, recurring every eight' seconds, shows clearly the way up the Rangitoto Channel and into port. Only little pleasure craft and local craft dare go amongst the reefs of rocks that lie between Bean Rock and the southern shore, and for such as these who go, so to speak, behind its back, the lantern shows no light, a sector that touches the shore at Point Resolution to the west, and North Tamaki Head to the east being obscured by a shield. Seaward, however, the light throws a white beam, visible 10 or 11 miles away, straight down Rangitoto Channel. Keep in Bean Rock's white beam after you have passed Rangitoto Channel and you are safe. Stray out of the channel to the east, nnd Bean Rock shows you a green light, warning you to port your helm to get back into the channel; stray to the west, and a red light warns you to starboard your helm, if you would not go aground on the shoals oil' Narrow Neck or Cheltenham Bcacli.

Then, rounding the white light buoy, with Auckland twinkling ahead, you have to pass through Bean Rock's red sector, but, if you are on your right course, the friendly beacon will throw a white beam on your stern, and, so long as you can see this behind you, you are"making a safe course up the harbour until you are off the wharves. Eastward, too, the beacon throws a narrow white beam down the Motu-Koreho channel for coastal craft. Nautical Mishap. Once in the history of Auckland, so it is said, an overseas steamer, outward bound, failed to read the Bean Rock light correctly and took a course between the lio-ht and the southern shore, a course that was quickly and violently halted by a reef of solid rock. But that was not, as far as one can see, the fault of the old light, which has talked like a "Dutch uncle" to every mariner using the port of Auckland these GO odd years past. . ~ Not until 1912 did the first of these new-fangled notions invade the splendid isolation of Bean Rock. On October 21 of that year the Auckland Harbour Board took over the management of the light from the Marine Department. Simultaneously the old 330 candlepower kerosene lamp and the keeper who tended it were "scrapped" together to make place for an unwatched acetylene lamp of 1200 candle-power. This lamp, too, is now obsolete, after 24 years' service, and with it .will be scrapped the ingenious sun-valve that has switched it on at eve and switched it off at dawn. This sun-valve is an adaptation of the apparatus often seen in an oculist's window, the little vanes, black on one side, silver on the other, that revolve in a vacuum driven by the force, of light. Economised by this automatic watchman, which switches the light on or off as needed, the supply of acetylene for the lamp has to be renewed only every 16 or 18 weeks. Between whiles the light is left to the care of the sunvalve.

■When, however, electricity flows into Bean Rock lighthouse and up its incandescent lamps the will be increased to more than double that of the present lantern, and the range of visibility of the beacon will be correspondingly increased. Although the cable was. laid to-day, however, much work remains to be done before Bean Bock light glows with a greater light. The shors end of the cable has to be connected to a cable that runs under the waterfront road to the edge of the sea; a transformer has to be installed in the

lighthouse, the lamps and innumejqable switches and "gadgets" have to be connected up, tested and made fool-proof, weather-proof and proof, indeed, against every possible stress and mishap that man can foresee