SERVICING OF LIGHTHOUSES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27040, 15 May 1953, Page 11

SERVICING OF LIGHTHOUSES

Work Of Auxiliary Ketch MAIL AND SUPPLIES FOR LONELY FAMILIES The 48-year-old auxiliary ketch Endeavour, well known on the New Zealand coast during and after the war Mammunition ship, has for the last seven months filled a new rote—that of servicing lighthouses tafa Wrth Cape to Mercury Bay, c ? astli f e - He s captain, Mr A. T. Kennnedy, who took command about four years ago, is at present in Christchurch ’on holiday. The J&ideavcur is owned and operated by the Royal New Zealand Navy, but Captain Kennedy and his crew of five are civilian public servants, among the few seagoing members of the Publiv Service. Captain Kennedy said in an inter- ?*?«.?< last, and good for many more years. Of course, her duties now involved much lighter running than when she; was an. ammunition ship. She had. been altered to provide room tor 30 tons of cargo and accommodation for 16 persons; and the accommodation was so good that a high-ranking naval officer who inspected the ship described it as better than that which he had had on the voyage out from Britain.

In the area covered by the Endeavour there are about 14 lighthouses. One week of every fortnight is used to take mail and stores to families who staff lighthouses—Captain Kennedy calls these “taxi runs." Every other week the Endeavour, with six technicians and labourers from the Marine Department aboard; does the. round of uninhabited lighthouses. For the men and their families who live at the lighthouses Captain Kennedy has a high regard. At each occupied lighthouse there are three families who get leave to the mainland only once in every 12 months. Theirs is a lonely life, though the tedium of past years is somewhat relieved by the radio-telephone, and the Endeavour and its crew are to them much what the bus drivers are to isolated country residents. They are at the mercy of the weather, and Captain Kennedy said he had seen a vegetable garden almost ready for eating completely destroyed by salt spray in a gale. The weather, too, is an important factor in the work of the Endeavour’s crew. Only one of the lighthouses can be reached by the keteh, and then only in calm weather. At the others the Marine Department employees have to be put ashore for their day’s work of painting lights and installing fresh batteries from dinghies. At times the work can be hazardous and is Sometimes interesting, but Captain Kennedy said one would have to experience a trip really to appreciate the work.

At the week-ends when they are in port the Endeavour’s crew maintain a round-the-clock emergency service as a voluntary effort. They do not. go anywhere without advising where they can be picked up should there be an emergency call on the radio-telephone from any of the lighthouses which could not be reached by air. Usually about two such emergencies arose in a year.