The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

Utterly incredible, not much radio but an appreciation for the Lighthouse builders the service and their families.
Try getting anything made like these from granite and at sea today
would be impossible imho !.

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

They are still out there building at sea with steel and under water concrete.
That is how they are doing off shore wind farms.

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

It wouldn't be impossible - but it would be a major operation.

Henry Winstanley building the first Eddystone lighthouse, after it was believed impossible, gets a lot of admiration from me. No funding available, because it was believed it would be money down the drain - so he negotiated to be able to get a levy from each ship when it docked in Plymouth if he funded the lighthouse himself and put a light on the rock.

He built the lighthouse with a mixture of inflated ego, ignorance of how hard it would be, and sheer guts and determination. Afterwards he said if he'd realised how trying it would be, he'd never have started. But he succeeded, and shipwreck rate plummeted.

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

The boom in lighthouse construction during the nineteenth century was largely facilitated by the development of steam power tools. Prior to this period, construction took a lot longer and the towers had a limited lifespan. The Douglas system of interlocking granite blocks with marble keys revolutionised construction and longevity.
Neil
(member, association of lighthouse keepers)

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

Must admit i have never heard of the Douglass system till now .

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

Up here, lighthouse building was a family business: The Stevenson family.

I think the models and explanations are still there in the National Museum of Scotland, on Chambers Street, Edinburgh.

David

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

There is an excellent book by Bella Bathhurst on the Lighthouse Stevensons

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sh...use_Stevensons

which seems to be based in part on Robert Louis Stevenson's publication "Records of a Family of Engineers" which can be found at

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/280

My mother always said that her great grandfather was one of the Lighthouse Stevensons although I never found a definite connection.

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

Particularly good are the Stevensons' 'Accounts' of each lighthouse build which they had to write for the Commissioners. These are available online to read, for example Alan Stevenson's 'Account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse' prepared for the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouses. It is this lighthouse that he describes as having granite stones that took between 55 and 320 man hours to dress each, depending on their location and complexity.

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

Wiki says it was Douglass not Douglas.

They were involved with the Wolf Rock Lighthouse down here between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly, apparently the first in the world to have a helipad up top.

Somewhere I have a photo I once took many years ago of the sea near Wolf Rock from a ship I was on which was on a 9 day inward journey from Montreal to Tilbury Docks, the reason I took the photo was because of the sea state, no not rough but almost mirror calm, the calmest I had ever seen, if I ever find it I'll try and post it up.

Lawrence.

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

Back in the late-60s as an impressionable schoolboy I went with my parents to visit the lighthouse on Anglesey. Access was down what seemed like an unending series of stone steps then across a rather fragile wire-rope bridge. Apart from the whole issue of 'where do you buy furniture to fit curved walls?' I remember the radio-room had a Marconi transmitter/receiver [surely should have been an Eddystone if it was in a lighthouse?] which looked distinctly 1930s - the receiver was a TRF with a 'regeneration' control!

Re: The lighthouses construction and operation.
 

Found it! and the chief hillbilly snapper...

Lawrence.