ELECTRIC LIGHTHOUSE

Evening Star, Issue 20150, 15 April 1929, Page 9

ELECTRIC LIGHTHOUSE

OLD-TIME CALLING EKBED The lighthouse-keeper himself has probably never considered his calling romantic, yet it has been the subject of ballad and story times without number, writes A. B. Cooper, in ‘Overseas.’ Presently his calling, like that of the old-time wreckers and smugglers and pirates—his less reputable rivals in sea romance—wifi have _ become legendary, for the electricity which lias consigned so many things to the scrap heap is now casting him there, tCO, , ~il Seeing that he is not likely to ho unemployed, but only removed permanently from his lonely station, tno loss to romance, which the mechanisation of the world so often means, seems cause for congratulation rather than sorrow. Penned in that narrow fewer tending the light, keeping vigil sometimes for lonely weeks, in such isolated situations as the Skerryvore, the ’Wolf Bock, the Dim Hearach, the Bell Bock, the Eddystonc. exposed to terrific storms and not inconsiderable dangers, the lighthouse-keeper’s life is not enviable. Now it seems likely to be ended, as lar ns onr own coastwise lights arc concerned, within the space of a lew years at the most, for already the change is actually being made at the I’endeii, the Lizard, the Hartland, and the Skerries. Trinity House, which controls all the lighthouses, lightships, _ beacons, and buoys around the British coast, has been busy, dining the months of last winter, experimenting with a vicw_ to discovering the best type of electrical .shore control, and now two entirely new types of automatic lighthouses liaie been "constructed. one at the South Foreland, and the other at Burnham, the Somerset, a light .which marks the treacherous Gore Sands in the Bristol Channel. At neither of these lighthouses is a keeper now reipiircd, and not only is the light controlled by an ingenious electric system, but each of these lighthouses is fitted with a duplicate lamp, which automatically operates if the other for any reason whatever breaks clown. . . Like many oilier electrical devices, the action of tins duplicate lamp is. almost uncanny, for, should its services be required, it not. only lights up, but sends an automatic warning to the shore. If the second lamp should fad —a possible but not very probable contingency, perhaps—an acetylene burner is lighted automatically. Needless to sav, ~a lighthouse which failed would be much worse than no lighthouse at nil. , , . ft is thus well to be assured by 1 nnit.y House that these two experimental lighthouses have operated perfectly. They have been visited every day, and the 'mechanism inspected, but in actual practice it will not be needful to visit these mechanically-controlled lighthouses more often than once a week, and even this is only necessary to maintain the navy-like spotlessness ol the mechanism and reflectors. There will be times undoubtedly when the remoter lights may not he accessible during much longer spaces of time, but there is no reason to anticipate any failure on that neemint. The light will go on burning, entirely controlled from the shore.

But in addition to they automatic, keeperless lighthouses, Trinity House lias another novelty up its sleeve—the wireless lighthouse, which is not a lighthouse at all! About twenty of these wireless beam lighthouses are now under construction, hut in place of the light there is sent out without intermission a wireless beam of 100 miles range, so that vessels picking it up can always define their position. 'Whatever the state of tiic weather may' be, and even in the densest fog. It will ho seen that this is in some respects an improvement on the light itself, for oven the strongest light may he obscured by fog, and even the great light at St. Katherine’s Point in tho Tsie of Wight has nothing like an effective range of 100 miles. ,ln the case of the wireless “.lighthouses,” which perhaps may come to ho called beamliouses. thc mechanism is automatic, needing no keeper, and is also in duplicate as a safeguard against breakdown.