Protecting the Mariner
Lighthouses and Lightships
Governments have increasingly seen protecting seafarers and
ships as their duty. Discover here how systems have gradually been
put in place to warn the mariner of dangers and help him decide his
position, and examples of how legislation has helped protect
him. Until modern aids such as radio and satellite navigation systems
became available, navigation was a matter of measuring the angle of
the sun or stars to fix a ship`s position, and of recognising
places ashore when in sight of land. Because clouds could blot out
sun and stars and bad weather could obscure the coast, these
methods were unreliable, and as a result many ships were
wrecked. To help the seafarer find his way safely around the coast, a
system of navigational lights was gradually introduced. The
earliest were no more than fires of wood or coal, sometimes placed
on towers to increase the distance from which they could be seen.
These were the forerunners of lighthouses. Fires were replaced with
candles, and then with oil and later electric lights. As engineers
grew bolder and more experienced, lighthouses were built not just
on the coast but also on offshore islands and rocks. These mark
such hazards as the Eddystone Rock in the English Channel, Fastnet
off the south of Ireland, or Skerryvore west of Scotland. Building
lighthouses offshore involved a lot of planning and organisation.
All materials and equipment had to be transported across miles of
often-rough water and work could only be done in the summer during
fine weather. Compared with candles, oil and electric lamps gave far stronger
beams, which were concentrated by powerful lenses and could be seen
over greater distances. They also had another big advantage. Using
these types of fuel also meant that the lights could be made to
flash or rotate. This allowed individual lighthouses to have
distinctive patterns, so mariners could identify them from how
often they flashed in a given time. Lighthouses are not much help
in fog, so many have audible signals which are switched on when
visibility is poor. 
 Lightship |
Where there needs to be a warning of shallow water but it is
difficult to build a lighthouse, a light ship would be anchored.
For instance, the notorious Goodwin Sands off Kent lie close to a
very busy shipping lane used by traffic up and down the east coast
of England. No less than three lightships marked the sands. Today, lighthouses and all lightships around the British Isles
are automated, so the days of men working for months in these
isolated stations are mostly over. Light ships can still be seen,
now working automatically. But many have been replaced by Large
Automatic Navigation Buoys. (LANBYs) Lights and other navigational aids round the coast are paid for
by `dues` - charges collected from every ship that uses a British
or Irish port. These are passed to the three authorities that
maintain navigational aids: Trinity House (for England, Wales and
the Channel Isles), the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses
(Scotland and the Isle of Man) and the Commissioners for Irish
Lights (for the island of Ireland).
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