So far as Great Britain is concerned, the unattended light has been brought to a high stage of efficiency and utility by the efforts of Messrs. David and Charles Stevenson, while in other parts of the world the apparatus and methods perfected by Mr. Gustaf Dalén of Stockholm are used extensively.
The most interesting example of the Stevenson unattended lighthouse is provided in the English Channel, indicating the entrance to the strait which leads to the Guernsey capital of St. Peter Port. This was one of the first of its character to be erected, but the type is now being adopted widely owing to the success of this initial undertaking. The Channel Islands have achieved an unsavoury reputation in marine annals, as they form a graveyard of the Channel; they have claimed their victims, during recent years at any rate, mostly from the ranks of the heavy cross-Channel traffic.
THE PLATTE FOUGÈRE LIGHTHOUSE.
This beacon, designed by Messrs. D. and C. Stevenson, probably is the finest unattended lighthouse in existence. On the top of the tower is the automatically controlled acetylene light.
The Russell Channel, leading to St. Peter Port from the north, is exceedingly dangerous, the sea being littered with granite rocks both submerged and exposed, of which the Grande Braye, Barsier, and Platte Fougère, form the outer rampart. Readers of Victor Hugo may gather some realistic idea of the perilous nature of these waters by perusing “The Toilers of the Sea,” in which these rocks figure very prominently, particularly the Platte Fougère. The menace of this corner of the channel is accentuated by the velocity of the tidal currents which swing and swirl round the reefs, together with the extreme range of the tides, which averages about 30 feet. Formerly, in thick weather, vessels found it almost impossible to pick up the Russell, and often a captain, by the rip and crash of metal being torn, to his dismay learned that he had swung too far to the westward.
SETTING THE COMPRESSED-AIR RESERVOIR AT FORT DOYLE.
The Platte Fougère automatic light is supplemented by a land station on the island of Guernsey a mile away.