LIGHTSHIP CREWS

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 April 1934, Page 11

LIGHTSHIP CREWS

ORDEALS IN FIERCE STORMS The breaking—loose of the French lightships at Sandettie and Gravelines during recent gales afford a reminder of what a debt of gratitude is owed to the crews who man these lightships round rocky shores. Being in a lightship is obviously a harder case than that of a lighthousekeeper. Lightships are placed where their lights are of most use, which generally means that they are in the most exposed and perilous spots. The crews are moored through the fiercest storms in their tossing iron hulls, which tug and tear at the three-ton mushroom-shaped anchors. It is surprisingly seldom that a lightship breaks loose even in the fiercest gale. The worst recorded occasion was in the great: gale of Decern-, her, 1849. when no fewer than four of the most important lightships broke loose, and for several nights their lights were out. In 1914 the South Goodwin lightship

broke loose and was missing for three days until found off the Flemish coast. This vessel is stationed where mooring is difficult, and it has broken loose three times in four years. Another Goodwin lightship, the Gull, was rammed and sunk in a fog by a liner in 1929. A lightship’s crew consists of eleven men, three going ashore in rotation. The master has alternate months afloat and ashore, but the men spend two months at sea to one on shore. Sometimes the weather is too rough for the relief ship to take the men off, and their time afloat is then lengthened considerably. There is also the question of delivering’ mails and piovisions to the crew, who in bad weather may bo marooned for days. When the men get ashore they are allowed a few days off, after which they return to work in the yards, painting buoys, cleaning mooring chains and handling stores. The oldest British lightship is the Nore, which /was established in 1732. Now there are sixty odd light vessels around the coasts flashing out their various warnings to passing ships. Recently a rector was feeling a little strange in a Sussex village after nearly a lifetime on the lightships. He had his own launch to take him to his tiny scattered congregations, very eeF ccc cl H.n- se ,t Si‘