Book Reviews
Atlantic Lights
Reviewed by the Editor
Atlantic Lights from North Shetland to Gibraltar
-photography by Philip Plisson & Guillaume Plisson;
Text by Daniel Charles
(Editions Pechur D'Images, Park D'activitès de Kermarguer, B.P. 85, 56470 La Trinité-sur-Mer, France)
no price given.
Atlantic Lights is the English text edition of Phares Ouest, reviewed in Beam Volume 28. This is primarily a large format (34 x 24 cm) picture book, a pictorial survey or inventory of the lighthouses of the Atlantic arc from the Shetland Islands, down the west coast of Scotland, around the north, west and south coasts of Ireland, south Wales, and the west and south coasts of England, to the French coast, and around the north and west coasts of Spain to Gibraltar.
When reviewing Phares Ouest, because my French is not good enough, I concentrated on the photography; and, I repeat, Philip and Guillaume Plisson's photography is stunning. The same pictures appear in Atlantic Lights and, therefore, in this review I am concentrating on the English translation of Daniel Charles's text.
Daniel Charles is described on the dust cover as a naval architect, historian, and journalist, a world authority on yachting history, working for the French Ministry of Culture and for the Ministry of Maritime Heritage. His text consists of an eight page general survey of lighthouse history, followed by an introduction to the lighthouses of each of the countries surveyed.
Unfortunately the text is not without errors-the opening sentence of the introduction has the Eddystone in Scotland. There are some inaccuracies in the translation resulting in the English text being misleading or confusing in places. The translation also throws up some peculiarities: for example Hook Tower becomes 'Hook dungeon'.
Daniel Charles asserts that when responsibility for Irish lighthouses was entrusted to the Customs authorities (in the period before 1810), Customs Officers embezzled the funds instead of building lighthouses. I think it would be more accurate to say that the Customs authorities neglected the lighthouses, contracting them out to private operators who raked off excessive profits. It is unfair to poke fun at the 'weight and inertia' of the Ballast Board; in fact, the Ballast Board built new lighthouses in dangerous situations as fast as resources and technology allowed, though the overview of Trinity House caused some delays. Later in the nineteenth century financial restrictions imposed by the Board of Trade were an impediment to progress.
Bloody Foreland (translated as 'Blood Coast') is named for the red sun setting over its red granite cliffs-I have checked this with the Irish Placenames Commission. The name first appears in eighteenth century navigation charts; it has nothing to do with pirates and wreckers who, the text implies, were the earliest inhabitants of Tory Island.
Visitors to Tory Island can no longer see the Cursing Stones (translated here as 'Curse Stone'). So far as I am aware the Cursing Stones were hidden by the island's priest after the wreck of the Wasp in 1884, and their present whereabouts is unknown.
Rathlin O'Birne Lighthouse is no longer powered by a nuclear isotope, as stated on page 48, and was not the only nuclear-powered lighthouse in the world, as stated on page 56. Dungeness Lighthouse was nuclear powered in the 1960s. I am not aware of pressure from environmentalists being the reason for the nuclear isotope being replaced by wind power and, later, by solar power. I do not know how the author concludes that Rathlin O'Birne is one of the most modern lighthouses in Ireland.
It is probably true that Oileanamid, the island on which Slyne Head Lighthouse is built, means the island of wood despite there being no trees on the island. However, the Irish for a tree is crann. Adhmad means timber, and the island may be named for the flotsam, mainly timber, that was washed up in the area and collected by the mainland population who rowed out to the island in their curraghs. Seán Faherty has not retired as Attendant of Slyne Head.
The division of land equally among all descendants in the Aran Islands (and in much of Connemara) was caused by the penal laws, not because 'the men of Aran knew nothing of birthright'.
Fastnet does not mean farewell in 'ancient Celtic'; it is more likely that it derives from the early Norse language, meaning a tooth. The Irish name for Fastnet is Carraig Aonair-the lonely rock. The first Fastnet Lighthouse was not a 'type of cast-iron scaffolding'; it was a solid tower of cast iron-the most modern construction material of the time, though it proved too rigid for lighthouse building. James Kavanagh was a foreman mason, not a one-time mason turned foreman.
Both towers at Inishowen were built at the same time as leading lights. When the front light was discontinued its tower was used to house the fog signal. The author tells us that taxi drivers now live in the former Keepers' dwellings. The fact is the Attendant of Inishowen also works as a taxi driver.
Fanad Head is the helicopter shore base for Tory Island and Inishtrahull, not for all of the lighthouses in Northern Ireland.
Blackrock Mayo was not the last Irish lighthouse to be electrified, but the photo does show the last gas re-bottling before the station was converted to solar power.
At Loophead, according to Charles, 'reflecting bars on the tower keeps birds, stunned by the light, from flying into the lantern'. In fact, these bars are lantern stays, designed to hold the lantern steady in high winds, much in the manner of flying butresses.
Ten building workers were washed off Tuskar Rock in a storm while the lighthouse was being built, not in a shipwreck before building commenced.
I draw attention to these errors not to quibble but so that readers of the book will not be misled. I am not qualified to comment in detail on the chapters on the lighthouses of other countries covered by the book. The importance of this book is in the pictures, however, and for these I cannot praise it highly enough.
Irish Lights
reviewed by the Editor
Irish Lighthouses - by Sharma Kranskopf
Appletree Press Ltd,
The Old Potato Station, 14 Howard Street South, Belfast, BT7 1AP;
isbn 0-86281-804-4
paperback, 96 pages,
58 colour photos;
Stg £12.99/IR£14.99
Sharma Kranskopf lives in a former lighthouse dwelling in the Shetland Islands. Her book is nicely designed and printed with good quality photos by photographers familiar to us including Richard Cummins (a former Lightkeeper), John Eagle, and Philip Plisson. The text consists of an introduction followed by a description of 36 lighthouses, selected subjectively by the author.
When the review copy arrived on my desk I really hoped that this, at last, would be a reliable, if not definitive, book on Irish lighthouses. Unfortunately, however, fascination with lighthouses and love of Ireland are insufficient without painstaking research. The author does not cite her sources and appears to have accepted unreliable secondary sources without checking primary sources. Some of the books listed in the bibliography contain significant inaccuracies.
It would be tedious to list all the errors I found; but there are a few points to which I feel I should draw attention. The author does not distinguish between the Dublin Ballast Committee and the Ballast Board. The Ballast Committee, set up in 1707, was a committee of Dublin Corporation with responsibility for the port. The Ballast Board (official title the Corporation for Preserving and Improving the Port of Dublin) was an independent statutory corporation established in 1786 to remove power over the port from Dublin Corporation, though Dublin Corporation was represented on the Ballast Board, as they continue to be represented on the Board of the Commissioners of Irish Lights. The Ballast Committee had no responsibility for lighthouses and the Ballast Board was only made responsible for lighthouses in 1810.
The author is incorrect to state that the Ballast Board hired Thomas Rogers as a lighthouse contractor. Indeed, the Board dispensed with Rogers' services as soon as possible after having been made responsible for providing the country's lighthouses, as they considered they could carry out the business more efficiently themselves.
It is probably true that Rogers underpaid and overworked his Lightkeepers but I am not aware of any documentary evidence that the Keepers supplemented their income by counterfeiting money, illicit distilling, or prostitution. Statements like this should not be perpetuated unless they can be substantiated.
Another fallacy repeated in the book is the 'pitiful' compensation paid to the dependants of the building workers lost on the Tuskar in 1812, and to the survivors of the disaster. As Frank Pelly points out elsewhere in this volume of Beam, the compensation paid by the Board was generous by the standards of the day. Indeed, the available evidence suggests that at that time the Board generally did the best it could for its employees, within the scope of the governing legislation.
The information given about each station seems almost random and is set out unsystematically. The full significance of some of the events described is not brought out. For example, it is quite an understatement to say that 'another storm on 27 November 1881 . . . put [Calf Rock] light out of commission' and the implications of this for the safety of the first Fastnet Lighthouse, which was of identical design, seems to have been overlooked by the author.
Whether through careless writing, typesetter's error, or poor editing I cannot be sure but readers of this book are informed that the Irish Lights Depot is at the ferry terminal in Rosslare.
A garbled passage suggests that both Inishgort and Clare Island were destroyed by fire in 1818 and that both stations were discontinued in 1965. Other trouble with dates includes the Tuskar smuggling incident which is stated as having been in 1921; Kish Lighthouse is stated as having been established in 1865; and the original unlit beacon on Blackrock Sligo is stated as having been built in 1819, destroyed by a storm in 1814, and that in 1816 unsuccessful attempts were made to restore the light. The book includes a list of lighthouses by date of establishment; a number of the dates given requires qualification, however.
The last page of the book is a map on which shows Ballycotton off Co. Waterford, Roche's Point in Cork City, Roancarrig at the top of Dunmanus Bay, Ardnakinna south-west of Sheep's Head, Blackrock Sligo just off the east side of Killala Bay, and Dun Laoghaire West south of Killiney Head.
Sounds in the Fog
reviewed by Frank Pelly
Lost Sounds: The Story of Coast Fog Signals - by Alan Renton (Whittles Publishing, Roseleigh House, Latheron Wheel,
Caithness, KW5 6DW, Scotland);
isbn 1-870325-83-4;
paperback, 209 pages, 57 photos,
16 illustrations, 2 appendices, bibliography, map, and index;
£16.95 Stg in UK
Lost Sounds records the experimental and technical development of sound emitting instruments, the ancilliary machinery, and the methods adopted over the last 140 years to assist the mariner in fog and poor visibility.
A comprehensive study of this specialised maritime aid to navigation is long overdue. There was a real danger of this aspect of lighthouse technology being lost to future generations. The author is to be congratulated for identifying this need and for his in-depth research and descriptive detail. Alan Renton's research covers the entire range of the sounding instruments employed-gongs, bells, cannons, explosives, reeds, sirens, typhons, diaphones, electric emitters; the installations-engine technology (oil, gas, generator), fog detectors, coding units; and the people involved-inventors, designers, manufacturers, operators.
The author documents his research by means of a historical tour of 13 lighthouse installations throughout England, Wales, and Scotland. Each stage of the tour comprises a comprehensive description of the fog signalling equipment, installation, development, and changes pertaining to that lighthouse over the years. The tour randomly includes a wide variety of other information-optics, the light source, inventors, installation, designers, manufacturers, operational procedures, equipment employed by other Lighthouse Authorities (USA, Canadian, Irish, French). The information is copious in detail and well referenced.
The very nature of the subject matter makes this publication a specialised and technical undertaking. Although the author endeavours to be descriptive in his narrative, the quality of the photographs and illustrations is lacking in visual or illustrative objectivity. Many of the photographs are of poor quality or were taken at too long a distance. Most of the illustrations lack referencing notations or identification of machinery items and parts. A good illustration or drawing is worth a thousand words and is essential for technical subjects of this nature.
The tour narrative switches backwards and forwards chronologically in tracing the development of equipment, or changes in the installation at the lighthouses. Likewise, information on other station equipment is randomly interspersed. This methodology strains the reader in understanding and keeping up with the author. Acquiring a concise over-view of different types of equipment is equally frustrating.
This publication contains a wealth of information. Alan Renton writes with a passion for this subject and a commitment to leave little unrecorded. The reader is left in no doubt of his vast knowledge. But for the methodology adopted, his work could have been an invaluable reference source.
In its present format this publication will appeal to those with an interest in the technical aspects of pharology and the development of engines.
Reviewed by the Editor
Atlantic Lights from North Shetland to Gibraltar
-photography by Philip Plisson & Guillaume Plisson;
Text by Daniel Charles
(Editions Pechur D'Images, Park D'activitès de Kermarguer, B.P. 85, 56470 La Trinité-sur-Mer, France)
no price given.
Atlantic Lights is the English text edition of Phares Ouest, reviewed in Beam Volume 28. This is primarily a large format (34 x 24 cm) picture book, a pictorial survey or inventory of the lighthouses of the Atlantic arc from the Shetland Islands, down the west coast of Scotland, around the north, west and south coasts of Ireland, south Wales, and the west and south coasts of England, to the French coast, and around the north and west coasts of Spain to Gibraltar.
When reviewing Phares Ouest, because my French is not good enough, I concentrated on the photography; and, I repeat, Philip and Guillaume Plisson's photography is stunning. The same pictures appear in Atlantic Lights and, therefore, in this review I am concentrating on the English translation of Daniel Charles's text.
Daniel Charles is described on the dust cover as a naval architect, historian, and journalist, a world authority on yachting history, working for the French Ministry of Culture and for the Ministry of Maritime Heritage. His text consists of an eight page general survey of lighthouse history, followed by an introduction to the lighthouses of each of the countries surveyed.
Unfortunately the text is not without errors-the opening sentence of the introduction has the Eddystone in Scotland. There are some inaccuracies in the translation resulting in the English text being misleading or confusing in places. The translation also throws up some peculiarities: for example Hook Tower becomes 'Hook dungeon'.
Daniel Charles asserts that when responsibility for Irish lighthouses was entrusted to the Customs authorities (in the period before 1810), Customs Officers embezzled the funds instead of building lighthouses. I think it would be more accurate to say that the Customs authorities neglected the lighthouses, contracting them out to private operators who raked off excessive profits. It is unfair to poke fun at the 'weight and inertia' of the Ballast Board; in fact, the Ballast Board built new lighthouses in dangerous situations as fast as resources and technology allowed, though the overview of Trinity House caused some delays. Later in the nineteenth century financial restrictions imposed by the Board of Trade were an impediment to progress.
Bloody Foreland (translated as 'Blood Coast') is named for the red sun setting over its red granite cliffs-I have checked this with the Irish Placenames Commission. The name first appears in eighteenth century navigation charts; it has nothing to do with pirates and wreckers who, the text implies, were the earliest inhabitants of Tory Island.
Visitors to Tory Island can no longer see the Cursing Stones (translated here as 'Curse Stone'). So far as I am aware the Cursing Stones were hidden by the island's priest after the wreck of the Wasp in 1884, and their present whereabouts is unknown.
Rathlin O'Birne Lighthouse is no longer powered by a nuclear isotope, as stated on page 48, and was not the only nuclear-powered lighthouse in the world, as stated on page 56. Dungeness Lighthouse was nuclear powered in the 1960s. I am not aware of pressure from environmentalists being the reason for the nuclear isotope being replaced by wind power and, later, by solar power. I do not know how the author concludes that Rathlin O'Birne is one of the most modern lighthouses in Ireland.
It is probably true that Oileanamid, the island on which Slyne Head Lighthouse is built, means the island of wood despite there being no trees on the island. However, the Irish for a tree is crann. Adhmad means timber, and the island may be named for the flotsam, mainly timber, that was washed up in the area and collected by the mainland population who rowed out to the island in their curraghs. Seán Faherty has not retired as Attendant of Slyne Head.
The division of land equally among all descendants in the Aran Islands (and in much of Connemara) was caused by the penal laws, not because 'the men of Aran knew nothing of birthright'.
Fastnet does not mean farewell in 'ancient Celtic'; it is more likely that it derives from the early Norse language, meaning a tooth. The Irish name for Fastnet is Carraig Aonair-the lonely rock. The first Fastnet Lighthouse was not a 'type of cast-iron scaffolding'; it was a solid tower of cast iron-the most modern construction material of the time, though it proved too rigid for lighthouse building. James Kavanagh was a foreman mason, not a one-time mason turned foreman.
Both towers at Inishowen were built at the same time as leading lights. When the front light was discontinued its tower was used to house the fog signal. The author tells us that taxi drivers now live in the former Keepers' dwellings. The fact is the Attendant of Inishowen also works as a taxi driver.
Fanad Head is the helicopter shore base for Tory Island and Inishtrahull, not for all of the lighthouses in Northern Ireland.
Blackrock Mayo was not the last Irish lighthouse to be electrified, but the photo does show the last gas re-bottling before the station was converted to solar power.
At Loophead, according to Charles, 'reflecting bars on the tower keeps birds, stunned by the light, from flying into the lantern'. In fact, these bars are lantern stays, designed to hold the lantern steady in high winds, much in the manner of flying butresses.
Ten building workers were washed off Tuskar Rock in a storm while the lighthouse was being built, not in a shipwreck before building commenced.
I draw attention to these errors not to quibble but so that readers of the book will not be misled. I am not qualified to comment in detail on the chapters on the lighthouses of other countries covered by the book. The importance of this book is in the pictures, however, and for these I cannot praise it highly enough.
Irish Lights
reviewed by the Editor
Irish Lighthouses - by Sharma Kranskopf
Appletree Press Ltd,
The Old Potato Station, 14 Howard Street South, Belfast, BT7 1AP;
isbn 0-86281-804-4
paperback, 96 pages,
58 colour photos;
Stg £12.99/IR£14.99
Sharma Kranskopf lives in a former lighthouse dwelling in the Shetland Islands. Her book is nicely designed and printed with good quality photos by photographers familiar to us including Richard Cummins (a former Lightkeeper), John Eagle, and Philip Plisson. The text consists of an introduction followed by a description of 36 lighthouses, selected subjectively by the author.
When the review copy arrived on my desk I really hoped that this, at last, would be a reliable, if not definitive, book on Irish lighthouses. Unfortunately, however, fascination with lighthouses and love of Ireland are insufficient without painstaking research. The author does not cite her sources and appears to have accepted unreliable secondary sources without checking primary sources. Some of the books listed in the bibliography contain significant inaccuracies.
It would be tedious to list all the errors I found; but there are a few points to which I feel I should draw attention. The author does not distinguish between the Dublin Ballast Committee and the Ballast Board. The Ballast Committee, set up in 1707, was a committee of Dublin Corporation with responsibility for the port. The Ballast Board (official title the Corporation for Preserving and Improving the Port of Dublin) was an independent statutory corporation established in 1786 to remove power over the port from Dublin Corporation, though Dublin Corporation was represented on the Ballast Board, as they continue to be represented on the Board of the Commissioners of Irish Lights. The Ballast Committee had no responsibility for lighthouses and the Ballast Board was only made responsible for lighthouses in 1810.
The author is incorrect to state that the Ballast Board hired Thomas Rogers as a lighthouse contractor. Indeed, the Board dispensed with Rogers' services as soon as possible after having been made responsible for providing the country's lighthouses, as they considered they could carry out the business more efficiently themselves.
It is probably true that Rogers underpaid and overworked his Lightkeepers but I am not aware of any documentary evidence that the Keepers supplemented their income by counterfeiting money, illicit distilling, or prostitution. Statements like this should not be perpetuated unless they can be substantiated.
Another fallacy repeated in the book is the 'pitiful' compensation paid to the dependants of the building workers lost on the Tuskar in 1812, and to the survivors of the disaster. As Frank Pelly points out elsewhere in this volume of Beam, the compensation paid by the Board was generous by the standards of the day. Indeed, the available evidence suggests that at that time the Board generally did the best it could for its employees, within the scope of the governing legislation.
The information given about each station seems almost random and is set out unsystematically. The full significance of some of the events described is not brought out. For example, it is quite an understatement to say that 'another storm on 27 November 1881 . . . put [Calf Rock] light out of commission' and the implications of this for the safety of the first Fastnet Lighthouse, which was of identical design, seems to have been overlooked by the author.
Whether through careless writing, typesetter's error, or poor editing I cannot be sure but readers of this book are informed that the Irish Lights Depot is at the ferry terminal in Rosslare.
A garbled passage suggests that both Inishgort and Clare Island were destroyed by fire in 1818 and that both stations were discontinued in 1965. Other trouble with dates includes the Tuskar smuggling incident which is stated as having been in 1921; Kish Lighthouse is stated as having been established in 1865; and the original unlit beacon on Blackrock Sligo is stated as having been built in 1819, destroyed by a storm in 1814, and that in 1816 unsuccessful attempts were made to restore the light. The book includes a list of lighthouses by date of establishment; a number of the dates given requires qualification, however.
The last page of the book is a map on which shows Ballycotton off Co. Waterford, Roche's Point in Cork City, Roancarrig at the top of Dunmanus Bay, Ardnakinna south-west of Sheep's Head, Blackrock Sligo just off the east side of Killala Bay, and Dun Laoghaire West south of Killiney Head.
Sounds in the Fog
reviewed by Frank Pelly
Lost Sounds: The Story of Coast Fog Signals - by Alan Renton (Whittles Publishing, Roseleigh House, Latheron Wheel,
Caithness, KW5 6DW, Scotland);
isbn 1-870325-83-4;
paperback, 209 pages, 57 photos,
16 illustrations, 2 appendices, bibliography, map, and index;
£16.95 Stg in UK
Lost Sounds records the experimental and technical development of sound emitting instruments, the ancilliary machinery, and the methods adopted over the last 140 years to assist the mariner in fog and poor visibility.
A comprehensive study of this specialised maritime aid to navigation is long overdue. There was a real danger of this aspect of lighthouse technology being lost to future generations. The author is to be congratulated for identifying this need and for his in-depth research and descriptive detail. Alan Renton's research covers the entire range of the sounding instruments employed-gongs, bells, cannons, explosives, reeds, sirens, typhons, diaphones, electric emitters; the installations-engine technology (oil, gas, generator), fog detectors, coding units; and the people involved-inventors, designers, manufacturers, operators.
The author documents his research by means of a historical tour of 13 lighthouse installations throughout England, Wales, and Scotland. Each stage of the tour comprises a comprehensive description of the fog signalling equipment, installation, development, and changes pertaining to that lighthouse over the years. The tour randomly includes a wide variety of other information-optics, the light source, inventors, installation, designers, manufacturers, operational procedures, equipment employed by other Lighthouse Authorities (USA, Canadian, Irish, French). The information is copious in detail and well referenced.
The very nature of the subject matter makes this publication a specialised and technical undertaking. Although the author endeavours to be descriptive in his narrative, the quality of the photographs and illustrations is lacking in visual or illustrative objectivity. Many of the photographs are of poor quality or were taken at too long a distance. Most of the illustrations lack referencing notations or identification of machinery items and parts. A good illustration or drawing is worth a thousand words and is essential for technical subjects of this nature.
The tour narrative switches backwards and forwards chronologically in tracing the development of equipment, or changes in the installation at the lighthouses. Likewise, information on other station equipment is randomly interspersed. This methodology strains the reader in understanding and keeping up with the author. Acquiring a concise over-view of different types of equipment is equally frustrating.
This publication contains a wealth of information. Alan Renton writes with a passion for this subject and a commitment to leave little unrecorded. The reader is left in no doubt of his vast knowledge. But for the methodology adopted, his work could have been an invaluable reference source.
In its present format this publication will appeal to those with an interest in the technical aspects of pharology and the development of engines.