Former lighthouse keeper Harold Taylor recalls another of his tours of duty at the Hanois lighthouse at Alderney, which began on 25th January 1974:-

I am not quite certain when I learned of my transfer from the Royal Sovereign to the above, but it must have been during my leave because I can remember, going to Shoreham and collecting my gear that had been packed for me and brought ashore on the relief, or some other time that the chopper had visited.

Double manning was implemented and I was to go off as the junior P.K. on the next relief which was due on the 25th Jan. I had sort of been 'shot up the arse' in this matter, because in the interim period it became apparent that it was not going to be only the 11 Tower Rocks to be so treated so, but all Rock Stations.

Had I kept my mouth shut I may have got an even better berth like one of the Lundy's or even Alderney.

Where Trinity managed to recruit all the additional staff at such short notice is a bit of a mystery, because prior to this, despite repeated advertisements in national papers they could not keep up with resignations.

It was significant that all of those that I met were from the armed forces. I have a theory, that they were offered easy release to take up these posts. Up to this date it had been the practice for the fellows going to the Channel Islands for the Rock station reliefs to be picked up by Bristow's at Eastleigh Airport, and flown over to Guernsey.

Of course initially this had only been the Hanois and the Casquets, although at the time I left Alderney, that had just been added. To accommodate this Trinity had been doing a bit of double shuffling personnel around. This had caused the keepers who resided in the Trinity cottages at Pliemont, for the manning of the Hanois being posted to Sark Lighthouse, so that the keepers coming in by chopper could man the Hanois. Remember, up to now only part crews had been exchanged each relief.

With full crews in future to be relieved, the chopper capacity was insufficient to accommodate every one, so we were instructed to report to the Guernsey Airport at the requisite time for the relief. It meant myself flying from Eastleigh. I do not now remember what other arrangements I made, whether it was from previous knowledge or not, but I lodged a few doors away from where I used to lodge when a S.A.K. the establishment was run by a Pole, who had enlarged his place into quite a spacious Guest House.

I found that several of the other lads were booked in there too. Included among them were the two others who were going off with me. Bob Kett, on whom I have remarked before, although we had never been on station together. Bob Wilkinson a Geordie lad who had come from the R.A.F where he was a trained Air Traffic Controller.

We met up with all the others and had the usual relief binge. They were an assortment of guys. One self styled ex S.A.S member by the name of McComie who got the D.T.'s in drink and could see animals heads coming out of the wall. He was in a bad state, according to him because of his reckless or drunken driving he had killed his girl friend for which he was suffering recriminations.

The Superintendent was on hand for this first relief, but the whole effort was a disaster, because the helicopter was delayed leaving Cornwall by fog. When it did arrive there was fog with us and they could not take off again. By the same token they were not entirely grounded because visibility was satisfactory in certain directions which was a boon to the helicopter company which I will explain.

I think it was Christmas day or the day after, when I was on the R.S. that I heard Bob Goldsmith, who was then on the Hanois reporting that a large bulk carrier had gone aground within sight of him. It was the Elwood Mead, she was carrying iron ore. Despite the passage of time the owners of this vessel had arrived at Guernsey the same time as us to investigate salvage possibilities. They were Australian owners.

There was no way they could get out to have a good look at their vessel and seeing us with a chopper, they negotiated with the crew to take them over the vessel.

I think here a good point to insert a section that I have omitted concerning the Royal Sovereign. Its origin is the incorporation into the Service of the Lanby ( Large Automatic Navigation Buoy). It was an invention brought over from Amerca to replace our Light Vessels. They had worked perfectly satisfactory there, but once Trinity got their hands on them and tried to modify them they were completely unreliable. They had installed one in Morecombe Bay to replace a buoy of that name before I left Bardsey.

So we were familiar with the failure rate from an early date. There had also been the Owers Lanby positioned off Selsey whilst I was on the Nab. Because of crowded shipping lanes in the Channel, the International Shipping Organisation had devised a separation scheme, to control the movement of vessels.

This provided a Light vessel at the western end and a Lanby at the eastern end. They had installed the monitoring unit for this appliance on the R.S. which was twenty four miles away. It was substantially the installation of this appliance which made the central control panel in the above deck watch room ineffective.

This came about because the Lanby was additional and not incorporated in this control. Because an interruption of the power supply would cause panic in the Lanby Control, one had to come down a floor to switch this Control to a stand-by mode before hand. Having got there, it was as quick to go to the engine room to change over engines and return to the Control panel and remove it from the stand-by position.

Especially as after that process there was other work to do about the station which otherwise would have meant several unnecessary exertions of ascending and descending flights of steps.

The Lanby only had one good point. We were paid 2/6d per day for managing another station. Economy for Trinity. Although we well earned that extra money for the inconvenience it caused. The monitor sent a message to the buoy every minute, and if things were O.K. it got a message back.

It was like having a cage of Budgerigars twittering away to each other. If a fault was detected, an alarm would sound and one investigated what that fault was. Sometimes this fault could be rejected by means of manual control. The faults likely to occur were Fire, Flood, Failure of light or Fog signal. If we were unable to clear the fault we then had to telephone Harwich, who would send a ship down to investigate.

Many were the times when a Flood had been reported, the ship ultimately reported only finding about half a gallon of seawater in the bilges. The buoy itself also emitted a signal which could be picked up on Radar. That is why we had the Radar set, but it was on the extreme of its range, and we would not pick up the signal for days at a time.

This reminds me that the Owers Lanby must have been put into operation after my arrival at R.S. because when they switched on the control, it was giving us false signals for the Greenwich Lanby which we controlled.

The Owers was to be controlled by St Catherine's Lighthouse. They had to come along and alter the frequency on which one was transmitting. We also carried out some tests for a signal from Dungeness. both of these again were on the extent of our range.

Whilst I was there a small Cypriot ship went missing, only shortly after reporting having passed us. Subsequently another ship got into difficulties and sustained serious damage and I believe was beached. Weeks later a third ship reported striking an under water obstruction and had to seek assistance.

When Trinity's vessel went and swept the area for obstruction they discovered the first vessel on the sea bottom about 4 miles from us. One could have some hairy moment stuck in the middle of the Ocean with two lines of ships passing either side of you, always hoping that they new what they were doing, but imagining what it could be like in fog when they could not visibly see you.

We knew that obviously even in these tightly packed waters the vessels were under automatic navigation.

We kicked about Guernsey Airport for five days before the reliefs could be completed, and it was really tedious, because we knew that reliefs could not be done and the chopper crews stood down before we did, but because the Supt. was there he had us arrive as soon as the airport opened and would not let us leave till it was too dark for a relief to be possible.

The worst day of all was the Sunday, when there were no services available and the bars were not open under the archaic island laws. The difficulty with the relief at the Hanois was that they had made a helicopter pad on the rocks, by blowing up a large area and concreting over. This was at a point below high water, and not much above low water Neap Tides.

This brought its own problems in the winter of short days, because if low water was before about seven in the morning or after four in the afternoon, it would be too dark. In these winter months one could get an overdue purely on the time of day, and no relationship with weather, although both could be a factor as well.

The P.K. coming ashore was Norman Wakeley, a Channel Islander himself, who lived on Sark. The other was Bob Goldsmith. My crew got on well, Bob Kett was not a lot of use in advising me of the general procedure adopted on the station, but nevertheless was a good worker and willing.

He seemed punch drunk most of the time. He had done a little boxing and was very keen on the sport. He nearly always got into scrapes ashore from his drink. I am more of the opinion that his condition was probably more as the result of drinking than boxing. Bob Wilkinson was a much more refined character, rather naive but good fun. The two Bobs got on well together both on station and ashore, where the Geordie lad was often led astray by his mate.

Bob Kett. had served aboard with Norman under the old order of shifts so had picked up a lot of knowledge in fishing practices from a man who carried on that occupation whilst on leave. As he enjoyed himself in the game I did not horn in on his past time. He had learnt all the best places to find crabs or lobsters at low water Springs and he kept us well supplied with the crustaceans.

He was also a sun-bathing fanatic, Bob Wilkinson was also keen enough to take part, but seemed rather modest at even exposing a small part of his flesh, although he was fair skinned, but I never noticed that he burned excessively.

The Hanois itself was a pig of a station. There had not been much room when I was there as a S.A.K. But now it was electrified there was no spare room at all. We were severely disadvantaged. I will try to recall the set up.

One mounted the dog steps and came in the lower door and climbed the internal spiral granite staircase of about twenty four steps and come to what I will call the toilet flat. The stairs came up through the centre of the floor.

Back behind you on floor level was the old coal store which had now been turned into a shower room. On the side in a sort of embrasure; where the old Stuart Turner charging engine had stood, was a fridge come deep freeze, which had an extra duration facility incorporated in it because the power was not on during daylight. It had to have this extended cooling period for this electric appliance. To one side of the stairs at its head was the toilet.

Now returned to being a flush type, although still with some problems with the ball valve. It now operated under sea water power as did the shower. For which we had a very handy Swedish manufacture electric portable pump which we used every day to fill the header tank from a pool in the landing.

The next floor up was the winch room, the winch was still manual. Around the walls were arranged 5 fuel storage tanks, to the right of which was a Mirrellees system of pumps to transfer fuel to the floor above and to the Service room at the top of the tower where the third engine reposed. The pump system worked on the Archimedes principle, and was very inefficient, I think mainly for the manner in which it had been installed, which I will come to later.

The next floor, which in the old days had been our food store and the Magazine, was now an engine room. Two engines and their generators were tightly crowded there, so much so that it was difficult to get into the room once the engine nearest the door was running, because of a cut out device which was difficult to squeeze past without operating it. It was also difficult to reach the second engine, and one more ore less had to climb over the first.

The room was virtually black from escaping exhaust and it was very difficult to get any sign of respectability about the place as I was to discover later. The next floor was the kitchen, gone was the old black lead stove, and in its place was a nice oil fired Hamco range which did a minimum amount of heating for radiators. The snag about this I was later to discover. The header fuel tank was on the stair head.

Next floor was the bedroom which had changed little since I was last there. Instead of having the old A.R.P. stretchers there was now some semblance of beds built on scaffold poles, which left much to be desired.
The next floor was the Service room in which it was difficult for more than two people to stand.

Immediately on the left as you entered and behind the opened door were three control panels for starting the various engines. Next to those was a charging unit for the batteries which were on the next floor. There was a nice array of shelving and drawers which made up the office facilities. On the far side of the room were limited amounts of cupboards for the keeper's food stuff, station spares and stores.

Continued in part 3.