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

There is more company aboard a lightship than in a lighthouse. In the British Isles, lightvessels have a crew consisting of a master and six lightsmen on board and a master and three lightsmen off duty ashore. The lightsmen serve one month afloat and then have a fortnight ashore on relief, while the masters take it turn and turn about, one month on the ship and one month ashore.

The crew's quarters revealed that each cabin had two bunks with Dunlopillo mattresses, lockers and a settee. Here heating was by a small electric heater while the galley or cookhouse was fitted with Calor gas for cooking and other purposes. From these homely details, I found myself transferred next to far more giddy heights. Soon I was climbing straight up the rungs of the almost perpendicular ladder in the light tower. Look up and never down, I am told. I hold on and obey and at length take the final step into the lightship's lantern, forty-three feet above the sea level.

Four groups of electric lamps with reflectors were arranged in pairs so as to give a double flash, and the whole apparatus revolved on ballbearings and was worked by electricity. As in all lightvessels, it was mounted on a pendulum-balanced table carried on pivots or gimbals so that however much it reeled at sea, the light remained upright and in focus. I could see that even when great waves tilted the ship, the apparatus would swing freely adjusted by the pendulum so that the beams neither shot down to the sea nor up to the sky, but remained horizontal.

As in a lighthouse, all round the lantern was a small gallery. Here the watch cleans the glass panes and there were large iron handles for him to hold onto for support when the ship is rolling in a gale force wind that could sweep the man over. Below the lantern in the look-out tower, a night and day watch is kept in all lightvessels in three watches of eight hours, and a phone is at hand to call either master or engine room if need be.

On deck I noticed a rocket ready in its tube in case of distress or warning signal was needed. If the lightship sights a ship in difficulty, a switch is put down, a button pressed and off the rocket soars to burst in the sky in orange flame and so attracts the attention of other ships.