Lighthouses Around The British Isles Coast

The waters of the British Isles are surrounded by thirty one shipping areas, all of which offer protection to shipping by way of hundreds of fully functioning lighthouses.

In days of old, the rocky coastline and outlying islands of Britain were lit by way of bonfires or lanterns, which were easily blown out or toppled by high winds and storms, and they were there to pinpoint the entrance to ports rather than to warn of imminent danger.

A lighthouse needs to be built high enough for it's light to be seen before the danger of the peril is reached.This is measured by way of trigonometry, by taking the square root of the lighthouse height in feet and then multiplying it by one point seventeen, in order to yield the distance of the horizon in nautical miles.

Therefore a lighthouse situated out to sea on a small rock would need to be much taller than a lighthouse built upon a high cliff, in order to be spotted in time, as a lighthouse situated on top of a high cliff- face could be much shorter in height. This is the reason that there are so many varying designs of lighthouses across the world.

VARIOUS LIGHTHOUSE DESIGNS OF THE 1800'S

(Taken from a Finnish collection of 1909)

In 1514, King Henry VIII organised a royal charter which he named the Lighthouse Authority of Trinity House, a governing body that is still in existence today.

Trinity House is responsible for all provision and maintainence of navigational aids and maritime communication systems in British territorial waters.

The organisation is a non departmental public body with it's organisational headquarters situated in Trinity Square, London in a building designed by Samuel Wyatt in 1796.

Trinity House's operational headquarters are situated in Harwich, Essex, where it's operations are supported by the three vessels, THV Alert, THV Patricia and the THV Galatea.

Trinity House also owns a small secretariat building on Tower Hill in London and two residential buildings in London's Royal Borough of Greenwich.

Today, Trinity House oversees sixty nine working lighthouses, although there are many more which grace the British Isles' coastline, many of which are operated by the various port authorities and some which are now no longer in operation and have become privately owned and used as either dwellings or holiday homes.

When the first lighthouses were built, they were manned by one or two men or even entire families, who were known as lighthouse keepers.It was their job to light the beacon during the hours of darkness and during storms.In those days the beacon was generally oil filled, most probably whale or vegetable oil.

In 1822, Augustin - Jean Fresnel invented his Fresnel Lens, pictured below, which completely revolutionised the lighthouse lantern, making the light much brighter and more easily seen, by concentrating light from an omnidirectional, rotating lens and light source, without the weight and volume required by the previous older types of oil lamps and parabolic refractor lenses.

These lens assemblies were first manned by way of a hand crank, meaning the lighthouse keeper would have to crank the lens assembly as regularly as every two hours, before eventually going on to be powered first by diesel and then electricity.

Automation of British lighthouses began in 1910, with the invention of the acetylene gas lamp.However this proved to be unpopular due to the problems of gas carriage and storage and the danger of explosion.Because of this, in the early 1900's Swedish scientist, Gustav Dalen, invented the Dalen Light, an electric solar lamp which was able to turn its self on at dusk and off again at dawn, an invention which saw Dalen win the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1912.

Modern automation began in the 1980's with all of Britain's lighthouses becoming unmanned by 1998. The automated lighthouses of today flash a white light, varying from one flash every twenty seconds to four flashes every fifteen seconds, depending on the traffic volume of the surrounding waters.

FIND LIGHTHOUSES AROUND THE BRITISH ISLES

Lighthouse Map of Scotland

www.photographers-resource.co.uk/SCT

Lighthouse Map of England and Wales

www.photographers-resource.co.uk/EW

Lighthouse Map of Ireland

www.photographers-resource.co.uk/IRL

BRITISH LIGHTHOUSE FACTS