srs 



TRINITY HOUSE. 



TRINITY HOUSE. 



S76 



it may be wftile or ealomvd, though the loss of light by the passage 

 through colouring medium comititutea a serious objection to the 

 adoption of that system. In all cases where the light is not required in 

 any particular direction, it U advisable to prevent its passage, and 

 to reflect the rays, which would otherwise be dispersed, in the direc- 

 tion to be illuminated. Floating-lights, however, are very fre- 

 quently made to show a red light; and there seem to be reasons 

 for U-lieving that it would be desirable to confine that colour to thorn, 

 in order to distinguish the land from the floating lights ; in which 

 can it would perhaps be also desirable to make the harbour lights 

 green, the essential condition being that no confusion should occur 

 between contiguous lights. In the table given in col. 374 the descrip- 

 tion of the apparatus used in the various lighthouses is given, wherever 

 it can be ascertained from published documents ; and it may here 

 suffice to refer the student who would investigate their respective 

 merits to the Reports of the Commissions of 1846 and 1858; to a 

 recently published reply to the second of these reports, under the 

 title of ' Lighthouse Management ;' and to Alan Stevenson's ' Elemen- 

 tary Treatise on Lighthouses.' The distances at which the several 

 lights are stated as being visible, are, it must be observed, affected by 

 the quality and character of the light, the height of the observer above 

 the level of the sea, and the atmospheric refraction. 



It may be added, that the cost of a large source of light, on either 

 the dioptric, or the catoptric systems, U usually about 2000/. ; and 

 that the annual expense of maintenance, including oil, wicks, salaries, 

 repairs of buildings, and of apparatus, ranges between 30(W. and 4002. 

 for a dioptric light, and between 350/. and 400/. for a catoptric light : 

 the cost of maintaining a floating-light varies between 1200/. and 

 13001. per annum, the crew consisting of a master, mate, two lamp- 

 lighters, and seven seamen, of whom one-third are on shore at a time. 



Of late years, the Mitchell's screw-piles [PILE ENGINE] have been very 

 successfully applied for the purpose of supporting fixed lights on shoals 

 in shallow water, and in comparatively-speaking protected positions ; 

 such as the beacon light at Fleetwood on the Wire, and the Maplin light 

 at the mouth of the Thames. Wherever it would be possible so to do, 

 these iron beacons should be substituted for the more unstable floating 

 lights, for the oscillation of the latter must always impair their efficiency ; 

 and the pillar structures in the day time form more conspicuous 

 beacons than the low hulls of the vessels can do. And here it may 

 be as well to remark, that even lighthouse towers are of greater value 

 for the purposes of navigation when they are constructed of materials 

 which are of colours able to make them conspicuous objects by night 

 as well as by day. The English lighthouses are usually painted white, 

 or red ; the lighthouse of Pondiche'ry, in the French East Indies, is 

 painted in alternate vertical bands of white and black, a most efficient 

 method of rendering it visible from a distance; the Scottish light- 

 houses are usually left of their natural colours, and are rarely dis- 

 tinguishable from the surrounding landscape in the day-time. 



The buoyage of the shores of England would appear to be conducted 

 in a very efficient manner, for there are no less than 1109 buoys in 

 position upon those shores, without counting the wreck-buoys, or the 

 warping-buoys at the entrances of ports, harbours, or docks. The 

 Admiralty, as might naturally be expected, continue to use the old- 

 fashioned nun and can buoys ; but at Liverpool, and in the ports of 

 active commerce, the Herbert's buoys are most generally used. These 

 are made with wide circular bottoms, having a depression in the centre 

 to which the eye for the mooring-cbain is attached, so as to bring the 

 centre of gravity as low as possible ; their cost varies with their size, 

 between 40/. and 902. In consequence of the gradual growth of the 

 buoyage system of England, there is great irregularity in the mode of 

 colouring or marking them : in foreign countries the custom is, how- 

 ever, to paint the buoys respectively on the port and starboard sides of 

 the channel of different colours, usually black and red; and though no 

 doubt it would be preferable to adopt a uniformity of system in this 

 respect, there would be a great amount of inconvenience in changing 

 the colours of the buoys in any old-established line of navigation. It 

 is worthy of remark that in the year 1858, not more than 4 per cent. 

 of the buoys laid down by the public authorities of the United King- 

 doms, broke from their moorings, whilst about 6 per cent, of those 

 laid down by local authorities got adrift In the portion of the 

 Thames between London and the open sea, there are nearly seventy 

 buoys, in addition to the light-ships, harbour-lights, fixed lights, and 

 beacons ; in the Mersey, the local authority connected with the port has 

 established no less than 7 lighthouses, 3 floating-lights, 05 buoys, and 

 10 beacons; and indeed any one who may have had occasion to 

 visit English and foreign ports, must be convinced that the buoyage of 

 our shores is far more perfectly performed than that of any foreign ones. 



Beacons are of every imaginable variety, from substantial stone 

 pillars and iron strnctures on piles, to heaps of stones, poles with 

 baskets at their heads, and to simple bunhes or twigs; then- cost 

 varying from 10,0001. to a few shillings. There are above 260 struc- 

 tures of some importance, erected for the purpose of beacons, whose 

 situations are indicated ii[>on the Admiralty charts; and of course 

 there are numerous smaller ones upon the banks of the rivers and 

 navigable creeks of our shores. The only system which seems to prc- 

 v.iil in the i-Ktnlilinhment and construction of these beacons, i* tli.it 

 they should indicate, in a ui.inncr understood by the local pilots, the 

 course of the navigable channel; and it would only bo a pedantic 



affectation to seek to establish any general system in a service which 

 essentially depends upon local necessities. The beacons on the re- 

 spective sides of a navigable channel ought, however, to present some 

 characteristic difference of colour or of outline. 



It may be desirable to add that in England and Ireland the lamps of 

 lighthouses are lighted from sunset to sunrise ; in Scotland they are 

 lighted at the commencement of the darkness and extinguished at 

 dawn, in accordance with a calculated table. The regulation standard 

 of consumption of oil in a first-class French dioptric apparatus is 785 

 gallons per annum ; it would appear that in England the average con- 

 sumption of all classes of lights is below this standard, whilst that of 

 Scotland is above it. 



As the arrangement of this article rendered it necessary to notice in 

 the commencement the history and organisation of the Trinity House ; 

 and then, the practical details of the lighthouse system as now carried 

 into execution ; the history of lighthouses has been deferred to the 

 conclusion. At a very early period in the history of commerce the 

 necessity for such structures must have been felt, and the ancients 

 paid very great attention to their construction. Originally the lights 

 on the sea-shore were nothing but open fires on the ground ; but by 

 degrees lofty towers were substituted for these rude modes of illumina- 

 tion, and at last the lighthouses were treated as architectural 

 monuments of the highest order. The recorded history of the 

 Colossus of Rhodes would appear to be rather apocryphal ; and the 

 accounts handed to us of the Pharos of Alexandria are also of very 

 doubtful authenticity ; Josephus, however, states that its fire could be 

 distinguished at 45 miles distance. This tower fell as recently 

 as A.D. 1303, having been constructed by Ptolemy Philadelphus about 

 B.C. 470. The Romans erected many lighthouses, and authentic 

 records have come down to us of those of Ostia, Caprea, Ravenna, 

 Puteoli, at the mouth of the Chrysorhoas, at the Bosphorus, at Boulogne, 

 Dover, &c., both in the writings of historians, and in medals ; and 

 Pennant gives even a plate of a tower, supposed to have been a liniiiaii 

 light-house, which existed at Gaireg in Wales. The mode of illuniin.i 

 tion adopted in these cases seems to have been either an open wood or 

 coal fire ; or the combustion of torches dipped in tar ; and in the most 

 ancient of these structures, the irons for suspending the fire pots, or 

 for holding the torches, may still be seen. During the Middle Ages 

 towers were erected for similar purposes, of which remains may still 

 occasionally be met with, and the tower of Genoa, a monument of the 

 Renaissance period, may be referred to as a model of taste in such 

 structures. The tower of Cordouan, at the mouth of the Garonne, was, 

 however, the one which marked the most distinctly the revival nt tins 

 class of monuments in modern time, and even at the present day it is 

 worthy of careful examination by the engineer and architect. It was 

 commenced in the reign of Henri II. of France, but no light was 

 exhibited in it until the reign of Henri IV. ; the style of architecture 

 adopted is a very ornate style of Renaissance, as practised in France 

 about the end of the 16th century. 



Perhaps the turning point, so to speak, of the history of lighthouse 

 building is to be found in the erection of Smeaton's celebrated 

 Eddystone lighthouse, completed in the year 1759; for the success 

 which attended the erection of that structure in so exposed a situation 

 has led to the subsequent operations of the same kind throughout the 

 world. Two attempts had previously been made to establish lights on 

 this dangerous reef of rocks in the Channel; one by Winstanley. tin- 

 other by Redyard ; the structure erected by the former was washed 

 away in the night of the 26th of November, 1703 ; and that erech-d l.y 

 the latter was burnt on the 2nd of December, 1 755. Smeaton was then 

 applied to by the lessee ; and he resolved to construct the new light- 

 house of masonry, solid up to a certain height, in order to secure a 

 sufficient resistance to the action of the sea by the dead weight of his 

 structure, and thence hollow, to enclose the store and living rooms ; 

 the outline of his tower Smeaton copied from the outline of the bole 

 of an oak tree, which he considered to be the best form to resist 

 external violence from the winds and waves. Smeaton has recorded 

 his own operations in a folio volume, published in 1791, entitled, 

 " A Narrative of the Building of the Eddystone Lighthouse," to which 

 the student is earnestly referred as to a model of a technical account of 

 a most important work. From this it appears that the first stone was 

 laid on the 12th of June, 1757, and that the light was first exhibited on 

 the 16th of October, 1759 : the light itself was obtained in Smeaton's 

 time by the combustion of a great number of candles placed in metallic 

 reflectors. Smeaton also erected an important lighthouse at Spurn 

 Point, at the mouth of the Huniber; but the grand principles of con- 

 struction he introduced in the Eddystone were not again conspicuously 

 applied, until the construction of the Start Point Lighthouse, between 

 1802 and 1806, under the direct orders of Mr. Stevenson, the engineer 

 to the Commissioners of the Northern lights. Since the latter period 

 the construction of lighthouses on the Bell Rock, the Skerry Vore, the 

 Bishop's Rock, the Br6hat, Barfleur, la Hague, Ac., has taken from the 

 novelty of such structures, and rendered the public more indifferent to 

 their merit; but they must always remain amongst the proudest 

 triumphs of human skill and patience. 



The use of oil lamps, instead of candles in lighthouses, is said to have 

 l -i] introduced by the celebrated hydrographical engineer, Borda, 

 about 1780 or 1790 ; and the manufacture of the reflectors was greatly 

 improved about the same time. The use of dioptric lights had been 



