CHAPTER XXI
UNATTENDED LIGHTHOUSES
During the past fifty years engineering science as applied to lighthouses has made remarkable advances. This has been due largely to the indefatigable perseverance and ceaseless labour of the chemist in regard to illumination. This wonder-worker has given us acetylene, has evolved means whereby oil-gas may be compressed to a pressure of several atmospheres with safety, and has discovered other gases obtainable by inexpensive and simple means. The engineer has not hesitated to profit from these developments, and has devised highly ingenious apparatuses whereby these illuminating mediums may be stored and used, so as to dispense with the human element almost entirely; in fact, in these instances the latter factor has been reduced to such a degree that it is only called upon to perform certain perfunctory operations, such as the recharging of the storage vessels at long intervals—three, six, or twelve months, according to circumstances.
This combination has provided the lighthouse engineer with a new, powerful, and efficient means of overcoming abnormal difficulties. Many a rock, reef, or stretch of uninhabited coastline has demanded indication, but has defied such protection from motives of cost, inaccessibility, or searching problems concerning the accommodation and relief of the keepers. As I have shown in the course of this volume, the erection of a first-class lighthouse is a costly undertaking, and the shipping interests, which in the case of Great Britain and a few other countries are called upon to pay the bill, naturally demur, unless the rock or other obstacle is situate in the centre of the marine thoroughfare, or the approach to a pitiless coast is extremely hazardous, when the erection of the tower becomes absolutely imperative. If one were to add up the costs of all the great lights scattered throughout the seven seas, it would be found that several millions sterling had been sunk in this humane effort, and yet, relatively speaking, but a small area of danger in the aggregate is safeguarded.
THE PLATTE FOUGÈRE LIGHTHOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
This automatic light marks a dangerous reef, off the Guernsey coast, which is familiar to readers of Victor Hugo’s “Toilers of the Sea.”
Then the human factor demands consideration. A colony of four or six men scarcely could be found willing to suffer isolation from the world at large and to be deprived of intercourse with their fellow-beings in the interests of shipping, say, through the Straits of Magellan, around Cape Horn, among the icy fastnesses of the Northern Labrador coast, or in Hudson Bay. Life in the lighthouses which guard the busy steamship lanes is monotonous and nerve-shattering enough, but to maroon men in such remote places as those mentioned above would be to promote a wholesale rush of inmates for the lunatic asylums.
This is where the chemist and the engineer in collaboration have triumphed. By their joint efforts it is now possible to supply the most inhospitable shore with a belt of lights equal in every respect to those mounting sentinel over the more densely populated reaches of coast in the civilized parts of the globe. The unattended lighthouse is a modern development born of necessity, which has proved highly serviceable, effective, and reliable. The passenger, as he lolls against the taffrail of the steamer ploughing her way carefully through the lane 375 miles long separating the mainland of South America from Tierra del Fuego, and watches the faithful star twinkling upon the top of a frowning cliff and urging the mariner to keep clear, may cherish a feeling of pity for the man who has to keep that beam shining. But his commiseration is misplaced. No human hands touch that beacon, perhaps, for six months or more at a time. It is a triumph of automatic operation. The same applies to the wicked shores of New Zealand, the uninviting northern stretches of the Gulf of Bothnia, the iron-bound coasts of Norway and Sweden, and many another unattractive mainland and island.
All the great maritime nations possess several of these silent, faithful lights, which, although upon their introduction they were regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, owing to the urgent necessity of a light never failing in its duty for the guidance of the seafarer, yet have been proved by the convincing lesson of experience to be as reliable in every respect as the light which is tended by human hands.