Volume Eight - Pre-Victorian to the present day - more aspects - A brief history of Trinity House lightvessels . .

Moving on from crude elevated ship’s lanterns, the navigation light in older vessels consisted of a grouping of oil wick burners focused in silvered copper reflectors mounted on a frame, and rotated by a weight-driven clock. By rearranging the reflector groupings, angling the reflectors and changing the speed of rotation, different light characters could be achieved, a very important identification measure at night in areas with several lights.

Lightvessels are not self-propelled; they are towed to and from station by Trinity House’s tenders for overhaul. Each lightvessel normally remains on station continuously during the three year period between routine dry-docking and overhaul. For this reason the vessels are numbered while the stations are named

Crew:- The eleven-strong crew attached to each lightvessel consisted of two Masters (or a Master and a Mate) and nine ratings, including two Able Bodied Seamen, two Fog Signal Drivers and two Lamp Lighters; one Master and six ratings were aboard at one time. There were originally twelve, but the position of carpenter was made redundant towards the end of the nineteenth century. Each Master served four weeks afloat and has four ashore generally free of all duty; the ratings served four weeks afloat with two ashore free of all duty.

The crews’ single berth cabins were below the weather deck and above the waterline. Radio-telephone equipment was fitted on the later manned lightvessels, replacing semaphore for communication with each other, the shore and nearby lifeboats.

Life for the men on the lightvessels was subject to very little change over the decades and centuries, although improvements in shipbuilding made gradual improvements in accommodation and manual labour, such as the introduction of engines to power the fog signal (replacing Chinese gongs) in 1862, oil gas as an illuminant (1905), dioptric lenses (1913) and electric lighting (1926).

The minimum requirement for this job was an Able Seaman's certificate, and appealed to a wide range of sea-going men who were unafraid of manual work in isolated waters, with deep rolling motions for two months at a time.

Many lightvessels in local shallow waters from the 1950s onwards had domestic radio and television and frequent drop-offs from passing yachtspeople, but lightvessels in deeper waters further from shore were less fortunate, and relied on fortnightly supplies from the Trinity House service tenders for their news, food and entertainments