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

Another lightvessel on the Breaksea station was LV6. She was also 137 feet (41.8m) overall with a 25 foot beam (7.6m) constructed in 1946 for Trinity House at the yard of Phillip & Son at Dartmouth at a tender price of £61,705. She was a steel plated vessel of riveted construction launched in May 1948 and was on station at Breaksea until 1954.

In 1971 she was painted green and moved to a new station to mark the wreck of the 'Texaco Caribbean' in the Straits of Dover. The vessel was automated in 1984 at Humber Ship Repairers Limited and placed on station at Eddystone. Later she was stationed at Newarp (1995), Goodwin (2001) and Sandettie (2003). She was still in use in 2005 having been converted to solar power. [277]

Life aboard a lightvessel stationed at the 'Nore' just before WWII is described by lighshipman, Mr. George Goldsmith Carter, in his book 'Looming Lights - A true story of the lightships' published in 1947. [281]

"The ship was a wooden one and built early in the nineteenth century. On the foredeck was a hand winch and in the tiny deckhouse was the clock, which when wound up. operated the light. From the middle of the deckhouse arose the mast which supported the lantern.

On first arrival, the new lightsman went below into the fo'c'sle, a large roomy space where the rest of the crew were unpacking stores (yeast, flour, beans, tinned milk, writing materials, toilet gear and so forth). Here the watch were slinging their hammocks on the massive timbers overhead. A bare wooden table ran right down the centre with wooden stools scrubbed spotlessly clean, and on a large cooking range which gleamed with blacklead a kettle was merrily boiling. In rough weather, on a reeling ship, it is easy to see that all cooking utensils have to be 'chocked down' with specially made iron bars.

A light meal, a little read by the light of a hurricane lamp, the first short sleep in a swinging hammock and it was time for the first watch. Leaving his mates snoring, the young lightsman hopped out of his hammock, climbed the deck ladder and relieved the watch. In the deckhouse, the lamptrimmer showed him the clock he had to wind every half hour to keep the lantern revolving. Great weights rose and fell in a long tube all through the long hours.