Hello All
Here is a yarn to tell your friends on a cold dark night around a warm fire.
Have you ever wondered why remote lighthouses had traditionally had has three lighthouse keepers? It was once not the case.
The three lighthouse keeper policy was only introduced after a tragic and gruesome event that happened at the original Smalls light house in the Irish sea in the winter of 1800. The original Smalls Lighthouse was erected over 1775 and 1776, on the plans of Liverpool musical instrument maker Henry Whiteside. It stood on nine oak pillars, allowing the sea to pass through beneath. Although it suffered from some rocking, it stood for 80 years. today there is a modern light house at the site.
The original light house employed a the two man team, Thomas Howell and Thomas Griffith, were known to quarrel and openly bitterly disliked one another. It was well known among their peers and family this animosity to each other. So you could imagine the tension between the two of them when posted for a 3 month stint together alone on a tiny light house stuck out in the Irish sea? The winter was a particularly a fierce one with huge crashing waves rocking the lighthouse and pumbled by driving rain and winds that howled through the structure. Night and day they battled the elements to keep the light lit at night.
Some time in the first month in their posting Griffith died in a freak accident. With no means of communication Howell was now faced with a impossible dilemma. As it was so well known his dislike for Griffith, Howell feared that he might be suspected of murder if he discarded the body into the sea. At first he kept his dead workcolleges body inside the small living quarters as he pondered his position. As the body began to decompose the smell permeated throughout the living quarters, Eating into the sanity of Howell who wrote of his plight into the logbook of the light house as he dutifully worked the light alone every night.
Howell in desperation built a makeshift coffin for the corpse from the light house furniture and lashed it to an outside shelf along the top iron railing walkway under the light. As the angry winter storms smashed up and over the light house, the stiff winds blew the box apart, Griffiths decomposing body's was blown to a sitting upright position with the top half of his body flapping about in the the cruel Atlantic winds in a tangled view of the hut's window. Storms caused the wind to catch the body in such a way that it seemed as though it was beckoning the horrorfied Howell inside with Griffiths dead arm flapping against the window. Griffiths lips and eyelids had rotted off and had exposed a hideous mocking grin as if he was a ghoul enjoying Howells torment.
Working alone and with the decaying corpse of his former colleague outside Howell managed to keep the lamp lit. As time went by his writing in the log became more and more frantic and eratic as the fear and insanity took hold of him. One cannot imagine the fear of being accused of murder and the trauma of the experience seeing a corpse day after day blowing around in the wind like a demented ghoul mocking your deepest fears. Whats that tapping on my window on a cold dark windy night? Why that you dead workcolleague pointing the finger of suspicion at you!
When Howell was finally relieved from the lighthouse the effect the situation had had on him was said to be so extreme that some of his friends did not recognise him. His hair had gone white and he was a babbling mess rocking back and forth mumbling to himself that it was not his fault over and over. The tragic story of events was pieced together by authorities through the Howells entries of the light house logbook.
After a lengthy enquiry by the British lighthouse board it was policy Until the automation of British lighthouses in the 1980s lighthouse teams were changed to rosters of three men. A roster designed to prevent that tragic situation ever happening again.
Hardluck
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« Last Edit: April 25, 2012, 03:33:40 am by hardluck »
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