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What are Lighthouses For

These systems require interpreting skills to plot courses and are prone to error and system failure.  Atmospheric conditions can also affect their accuracy at dawn, dusk and during fog. In addition it is always the risk that terrorists or others could interfere with the radio signals and put these out of operation for period. So without the back up of lights, visual marks, we could have a series of shipping disasters that would make historic losses look small.

Generally its only the commercial vessels which are equipped with sophisticated satellite equipment, and many recreational craft, smaller fishing boats and lifeboats still rely largely on existing lights and marks.

In researching and writing up the location guides there have seen a number of occasions where Trinity House has considered lights to no longer to be necessary, on the basis that later technology is making them obsolete, and its only local protests that have persuaded them to keep them operational, although usually at a reduced power.

Lighthouses prior to de-manning also provided another service now lost, looking out for ships or people in difficulty, this they did in cooperation with a large number of coastguard stations and between them most of the coast could be watched. In addition to the demanning of lighthouses and removal of most lightships most of the full time coastguard stations are now closed. There is a new voluntary group attempting to fill some of this vacuum but realistically its unlikely that a large percentage of the coast will be watched again.

The technology we have will continues to get better, more reliable and more people will both have primary and small back up systems, and while for the foreseeable future you will want harbour buoys, the future of other lights is less certain.

The driving force, supplier of most of these new electronic enhanced navigational toys to the lighting authorities is a company called VT Communications Ltd. This was the company that was called Merlin Communications and was created by the privatisation of the BBC World Service transmission sites. They are now a part of a public company, VT Group, and VT Group are currently in the course of being taken over by another company Babcock International Group PLC, who are already a major supplier in these areas.

But what if there is a bug in their software, a volcanic or other disturbance, a sun flair, meteorite or a whole range of other unknowns disrupting radio signals. What if terrorists or criminals should block radio signals or just flood the waves with static or rubbish. What if these electronic aids stopped working, then without the lighthouses we would have the biggest collection of shipping disasters ever seen, we could not feed the people of Britain, as Britain could become a 'no go' area for shipping.

In my view we are not likely to see the sudden announcement of the closure of all lighthouses, but many of the small units, those that look like metal structures on legs, are likely to go, and when they are not required these are likely to be scraped and lost.  If lucky, a few may go to museum sites. A lot of the smaller coastal lighthouses are also likely to close and be sold for conversion to homes with good views. Some island sites will be sold to nature preservation trusts as observatories. The major structures are eventually likely to have their lights turned off but remain for a period as day marks, some being sold to English Heritage and the National Trust or regional variations on these as tourist attractions. Some may be bought by Trusts that may preserve and run them, although this is not easy currently to do and only the Happisburgh Lighthouse, in Norfolk  has achieved this so far. Some will be transferred to harbour authorities or local councils.

Its impossible to preserve everything and with around 400 lighthouses, its clear that only some will be able to be preserved as heritage items, the rest will quite naturally have other uses found for them or they will be destroyed as a cheaper solution to maintaining them.....

It will never happen, you may say, but check out the press release issued by the UK's lighting authorities in May 2010, it says :-

And the current plan included shutting 6 lighthouses, 18 buoys, 5 fog signals, 3 beacons and 1 radar beacon and decrease the range of light at 44 lighthouses.

So from this you can see total reliance is to be placed on the electronic navigational systems, and the lighthouse system depleted, with only one light visible you can't plot a position, so it will become of no use, and can then naturally be switched off after the next review.

Not quite like turning off our car headlights and blacking out our car windows and driving on the SATNAV alone, but heading that way.