#lighthouse history

[ltwilliammowett]

Lighthouse Keeper chest ?, 19th century

Painted with view of Gurnet Twin Lighthouses. Plymouth Light Station, also known as Gurnet Light, was first established on a high bluff at the end of Gurnet Point in 1768. Plymouth served as one of the major ports of colonial America. Increased shipping traffic necessitated a navigational aid to guide mariners in and out of Plymouth Harbor and further promote trade. The original structure resembled a house with a lantern room at each end of the roof. After a fire destroyed the first light station in 1801, a new pair of wooden towers was constructed by 1803.

In 1842 the crumbling towers were replaced with two white octagonal pyramidal towers. The north light was 110 feet above sea level, and the south tower 102 feet. However, the lights were too close together and often were seen as a merged single beam of light. 1871 a fourth-order fresnel lens was installed, greatly increasing the strength of the lights. And in 1914 the Cape Cod Canal opened, giving new importance to the Gurnet as a navigational aid. The Bureau of Lighthouses discontinued one of the twin lights in 1924 as it phased out multiple lights. The remaining light still stands.

On March 8, 1977, the Plymouth Light Station was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1998 the Coast Guard moved the lighthouse back from the eroding 45-foot cliff. It was standing only 50 feet from the edge when it was placed on rollers and moved by tracks 140 feet from its previous site. It now sits on the property of Fort Andrew at Gurnet Point. And in 1999 the Coast Guard gave Project Gurnet & Bug Lights, Inc. the first of many 5-year licenses allowing us to restore, preserve, and maintain Gurnet Light.

[saraichinwag]

Why Are Lighthouses Important?

[honourablejester]

Oh, I didn’t know that.

I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on youtube, and browsing the comments several people mentioned …

Okay. The song is about the real sinking of the freighter the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in 1975. And there’s a line in the song:

“In the Maritime Sailor’s Cathedral,

The Church Bell chimed till it rang twenty nine times,

For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald”

Which references something that the actual Maritime Church in Detroit did in honour of the ship’s crew. And I just found out in those youtube comments for his song that when Gordon Lightfoot died in May last year (2023), the Maritime Church rang those bells again, this time 30 times. Once for every man on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and once more for Gordon Lightfoot.

That’s … That is a memorial I would be proud to have earned. And proud to give. I do like that. A lot.

Apparently, the Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior also lit its beacon in honour of him.

Sorry. I’m having … extremely maritime sort of feelings over here. Songs and memorials, bells and beacons, and the ways we carry memory forward. That’s … that’s a good memorial. I like that.

[wrathofachilleus]

[clove-pinks]

A few Fresnel lenses from my visit to the National Museum of the Great Lakes! This one is a fourth-order lens from the lighthouse on Ojibwa Island, Lake Michigan, made in 1891.

A cute little fifth-order lens, which was used in Sandusky Harbor, Ohio, in 1891.

No first-order Fresnel lenses were used on the Great Lakes, and only five second-order lenses were placed. One of them was in the Spectacle Reef Lighthouse on Lake Huron in 1873, now in the museum:

My photography doesn't give a true sense of scale; that second-order lens is huge.

There is also a model of the lightship Huron, which is now a museum ship you can visit.

[illustratus]

The Tower of Hercules, a Roman lighthouse in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain

[avvidstarion]

The characters in veilguard make Such a big deal out of Thee Elven Gods being real and evil when like. Idk I always got the vibe that the average human wouldn’t be able to name any of the elven gods except for maybe Mythal. The city elves don’t even know much about the Dalish and that’s like. By human design. The Dalish are a persecuted and oppressed religions minority and I feel like this is just another way the game glosses over “political lore”. The average reaction to the news wouldn’t be deep existential dread it would be “wtf is a ghilan’nain?”

[sometimeslondon]

A lighthouse in London

I like a bit of quirkiness. This lighthouse was built in 1864. Although located by the River Thames, it was not a navigational aid but used to experiment with and develop lighting equipment. You may have also seen it in the Netflix film, Rogue Agent.

[ksjanes]

The lighthouse in Jupiter Florida was conceived in 1851, the Jupiter Lighthouse was constructed in stages over the next eight years. The tower is constructed of brick. The lighthouse at Jupiter was first illuminated on July 10,1860. Over the years the humidity and sea air discolored the brick and it was painted red around 1910. The Light was converted to electricity in 1928.

[jadafitch]

More Maine lighthouses coming soon...ish.

[thedeadthree]

𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐆𝐄: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐄𝐈𝐋𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐃 ➸ irulanne . the rook .

𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒 . 𝐄𝐋𝐅 . 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑 𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐄 .

-`. template by @kanos . coloring . icons .

✧ ― 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 (ask to be added or removed or interact 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞!!):

@pavus, @wlwaerith, @shadowsofrose, @grapecaseschoices, @nokstella

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@aezyrraeshh, @imogenkol, @aceghosts, @full---ofstarlight, @ellierenae

[ltwilliammowett]

Rooms in a Lighthouse

Although the buildings of lighthouses differ depending on their location and purpose, they generally have common components. However, a distinction must also be made between a lighthouse station consisting of the lighthouse and all the outbuildings such as the lighthouse keeper's house, the fuel house, the boathouse and the building for fog signalling, i.e. a land station, and an inhabited lighthouse as it was found at sea.

Sections of Bell Rock and Skerryvore Lighthouses, date 1884

Skerryvore is a remote reef that lies off the west coast of Scotland, 12 miles (19 kilometres) south-west of the island of Tiree. Skerryvore is best known as the name given to the lighthouse on the skerry, built with some difficulty between 1838 and 1844 by Alan Stevenson.

The Bell Rock Lighthouse, off the coast of Angus, Scotland, is the world's oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse. It was built between 1807 and 1810 by Robert Stevenson on the Bell Rock (also known as Inchcape) in the North Sea, 11 miles (18 km) east of the Firth of Tay. Standing 35 metres (115 ft) tall, its light is visible from 35 statute miles (56 km) inland.

If you are only dealing with an inhabited tower, you usually have the following rooms in it. Please note that, apart from the lantern room, there is no standardised scheme and the rooms were often arranged differently.

The lantern room is the glazed housing at the top of the lighthouse that contains the lamp and the lens. The glass panes are held in place by vertical or diagonal metal rungs. A lightning conductor and an earthing system, which are connected to the metal roof of the dome, ensure that any lightning strikes are safely discharged.

Sections of the Eddystone Lighthouse of 1759 and 1884

Immediately below the lantern room is usually a guard room where fuel and other supplies were stored and where the keeper prepared the lanterns for the night and often kept watch. The clockwork (for turning the lenses) was also located there. On a lighthouse there is often an open platform, the gallery, outside the watchroom (main gallery) or the lantern room (lantern gallery). It was mainly used to clean the outside of the lantern room windows. Below this was a living room, bedroom, possibly a separate kitchen, if not a cooking area was accommodated in the living room. In addition, there were often several storage rooms, an oil room (where the oil for the lantern were storaged) and a coal room. And if you're wondering where the bathroom was - well there wasn't one, there was a wash bowl, possibly a wooden tub for an occasional bath, but rarely, and chamber pots in the bedroom.

Life in a lighthouse at sea was not easy and managed to bring many an old sea dog to his knees. The lighthouse keepers on land had it much easier.

[saraichinwag]

Do People Live in Lighthouses?

[wrathofachilleus]

a moment in the enchanted forest.

[clove-pinks]

A pair of Mediterranean seascapes: a capriccio of a coastal view; and a naval battle. Circle of Orazio Grevenbroeck (1676–1729).

[existentialblake]

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the universe.