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Harold Taylor was born in 1926 and when around 30 years old he decided to leave the police force and join Trinity House as a lighthouse keeper. At the time of this story, Harold had been with them for nearly two years.
Whilst Harold Taylor was home on leave from Portland Breakwater Lighthouse, things at home were getting a bit desperate. He and his wife were sharing accommodation with his wife's parents. Not only was it not convenient, but his wife was also expecting, and there was no way, with an increasing family, that they could stay there. Harold tells us:
I was unable to get anywhere on the council list, so the only option was to purchase. Toward this end I had already cashed in any insurances that I had, and gathered together as much capital as possible, but could not seem to raise that last little bit. We had viewed some places, but they were either too dear, or needed too much work done on them, which I would not be able to afford.
I subsequently got the instruction to report to the Needles lighthouse for duty. This meant travelling to the Isle of Wight. I took the opportunity to take my wife and children for the day out, especially to see Osborne House. I had found from a previous visit that I would be admitted free of charge. The only calamity that day was when my youngest son was too eager to do something and finished up all covered in blood from a fall, but in general a good day was had by all.
Evenings at the lighthouse were the bad time on relief, as most were intent upon imbibing as much alcohol as they could to sustain them over the next two months of abstinence. I usually headed for a cinema followed by a drink, far removed from the rest of the mob, to avoid being involved in a binge.
We were taken out about midnight by launch to board the T.H.V. Beacon, a very old steamer capable of about 5 knots, with the tide. I was to see her many times in the distance steaming with much smoke and, yes, going backwards.
The quarters were terrible and access to the cold room ridiculous. One had to go down through a hatch into a small square area. When the cold room door was open it almost filled the space and it was very difficult to lower stores down and stow them. We sailed in the early hours and were never told the sequence by which the relief would be done. Besides us going to the Needles, there were three Light vessel crews. The Shamble L.V. was near Weymouth, The Owers off Selsey, and the Royal Sovereign off Eastbourne. I think the crew of the Nab Tower mustered the following day.
As it turned out we were to be done first, in the dark. The keepers at the Needles were also in the dark, if you will excuse the pun, because the Needles was not equipped with wireless, so they were unable to be informed of any change of plan once the ship had left harbour. They therefore had to keep tuned in with their domestic radio and hope to pick up any message, if given. They were mainly relied upon to keep a good lookout and identify the ship in the dark.
There was no external lighting on the 'set off' at the lighthouse, but the keepers were busy dangling a wander lead from the kitchen window to give us some light below. It was more of a hindrance then a help, but the intention was good. So the relief was carried out at about 0200 hours. I do not remember now if I was the only person on the relief or if another was with me. I think Pete Vaisey must have gone with me in view that he was with me for the second month.
The keeper going ashore was the PK (principal keeper) Griff Humphreys, whose first station it was as PK. He had come from Portland Bill, where he had been senior hand. It was rumoured that he had £8,000 in large silver coins, which he was frightened to bank for tax reasons. The station was supposed to be the best for tips and regularly had queues, brought by bus from the town. This was to be stopped later because of misconduct and bloody-mindedness.
The tip procedure is really an overhang from the bad old days, when the keepers were not paid enough and had to live off handouts. Though a lot of places at one time existed on tips, a change of circumstances had caused visitors to be stopped, although no supplement was made for the loss of income. My own personal opinion is that visitors should not be allowed, as I have no wish to be a beggar, though Trinity's policy was that visitors should be encouraged. The powers that be do not, however suffer this inconvenience and humiliation.
The keepers on station were Bunny Austin as KIC (keeper-in-charge) and Pete as previously mentioned. They were easy keepers to get on with, although apparently Griff was not liked. Bunny was keen on fishing and went out at low water each day and got to the deep channel, on the inward edge of the first needle by walking along a narrow ledge that came visible. I think that at one time this was where a submarine telephone cable had been attached. I do not think Bunny ever had any luck, but was ever hopeful.
What I did learn from them was 'crab holing'. I know Charlie on the Hanois had done a little on those rocks, but here I saw it to be much more productive. Off the seaward tip of the lighthouse at low water a chalk reef appears, in which there are several holes created when large flints have been worked out by the sea. These become shelters for crabs when they are shedding their shells and their backs are soft. They are not always accessible, but on low water of a spring tide, it is possible to reach these holes and pull out the crabs either by hand or with tools.
A supplement of shellfish is very useful at times, and well looked forward to. Years later when I was again on that station, I pulled out 18 crabs in one day, on this reef and another that lays off the seaward side of the first needle. In fact, having viewed a three hundred year old sketch, I believe this reef in fact to be a toppled needle from which the group of rocks got their name.
The Needles was an electric station, the first that I had served at. This was generated by two-cylinder Gardner engines, I believe known as 1L2. These drove dynamos, which produced 100volt D.C. power. This was distributed by a very antiquated switchboard so that any of the three engines could be coupled together when we had fog, in order to drive electric motors attached to compressors to pump up the air tanks. The fog signal was a reed and the main light was an occulting one. In other words, the light was exhibited for longer than it was dark.
To take the load whilst the light was not required and to prevent surges on the engines, the power was diverted to bulbs of equal intensity in a darkened cubicle. The motor for the fog signal was also housed in the lower lantern, as were the air tanks. In fact they took up three-quarters of the floor space.
The signal was not controlled by a time clock as at other non-electric stations, but by small electric motors which, through gearing, rotated some discs at one rotation per minute. On these discs there were notches and bumps, and around these discs contacts were held. When they fell into a notch no contact was made; on a bump, contact was made through a solenoid, which released electrical control to a valve that allowed the air to escape and so sound the whistle for a particular length of time.
One ideal thing with the layout of the lantern was that at glazing level there was a wide catwalk, which enabled us to sunbathe even when there was a gale of wind blowing outside, although that was not its intended purpose. The thickness of the glass did take off a lot of the sun's power, however. I must point out that the lens was a fixed one and did not revolve.
The new innovation at this lighthouse was the V.H.F telephone. It was in fact a radio link with St. Catherine's Lighthouse. It was not very good because Trinity expected it to do more than it was designed for. They expected it to work over a distance of about 20 miles when it was designed to work over 6 miles.
The theory behind the equipment was for use in isolated areas and one charging would last about 6 months with normal use. We could not get 6 minutes on daily charging, and this was only with the co-operation of the keepers at St. Catherine's. If they could not be bothered, they would just let the line breakdown, but at others, they would hold contacts 'in' so that the conversation could go on a little longer.
A peculiar situation used to be, that if one of our keepers wanted specifically to have a call they would remove the aerial and warm it or dry it by the stove, and that seemed to make the call last longer. For real communication work it was a dead loss, but it did mean that the depot could not worry us with calls. Most of our messages were relayed through the other station.
This being the circumstances we still had to keep our eye open for the Coast Guard Station on the cliff top, who would use the Aldis lamp to pass messages. The only difficulty about this was that they were on our blind side, so it was only usually by chance as someone passed the window outside the bedroom door and saw the flashing light. As usual one kept the watch in the kitchen.
This is not disparaging toward the keepers, because the lantern watch was only really for dealing with temperamental flame burners, but Trinity had not woken up to the fact they were being replaced, and the process had been going on for over thirty years. When you realise it, keeping watch in a brightly illuminated interior is useless to see anything going on outside. In most cases lighthouses only had a poor oil lamp for illumination, therefore looking out through the windows was much more efficient.
I found myself called upon to receive messages by lamp, as I was much more efficient at doing so, although, the others did not mind sending. This would mean I might be called out of bed either day or night for the purpose, which was a bit of a liberty.
One of Bunny's favourite day time occupations I found, was to take the station telescope up to the lantern during the afternoon and spy on the couples on Alum Bay beaches and headland, we were over a mile away. He would come back with lurid stories of what was going on.
I found this hard to believe, because I had looked over there, and apart from making out that they were probably male or female, it was indeed up to ones imagination as to what was going on. However, with the aid of a toilet roll tube I did extend the focal length of the telescope, which increased the size of the image, at the expense of some of the sharpness. With this, the knowledge of what was going on was more certain. Which only resulted in Bunny spending longer in the lantern and coming down more red eyed than before.
The Needles was the first lighthouse to be equipped with television. No this was not by the generosity of T.H. The Lymington Flower Society donated the set. They were also the suppliers of the first wireless set to a lighthouse back in 1928. It was wonderful a gesture and enabled us to watch the World Cup that year, which was held in Britain, and which we won.
This was the first time I knew that there was such a series held. Reception was not too marvellous at times. The main transmitter aerial was on Rowbridge Down. Radio waves for UHF transmission goes out in straight lines and for this type of transmission, like our telephone, it is regarded as only receivable in line of sight. We being below the cliff, were not.
Another phenomena, was that either large ships passing absorbed the strength of the signal, or gave off a stronger signal than we were receiving, the result of which was that our screen would do all sorts of contortions, when any liner or tanker was within about a mile of us. The set had been adapted to work off 100 volts D.C. power, so in theory we could only watch when the light was exhibited at night. In those days there were few floodlit games, but we did not miss much.
I suppose, one might say there was another phenomena that year, it was the weather. The wettest and the stormiest in living memory, some would say. It was exceptionally bad and many blamed it upon the amount of Atomic bomb testing that was going on all over the world, to find the most powerful weapon for retaliation, rather than finding a similar such weapon as a deterrent.
When my month came to an end I discovered that I had to stay for a second month. Griff had gone sick. There was another new addition to the crew, his name was Evans, but I forget the Christian name. He was to replace a keeper who had transferred, it was a chap Snow, who had married one of the female staff at the depot and managed a transfer to Beachy Head.
Unfortunately he was another of the early deaths in young men. Also landed on that relief was a mechanic, Frank Woolstan, from whom we heard that this new keeper was the one who had upset Dennis on Lundy, and got thumped with a big spanner to cure him of inflaming arguments. He kept fairly quiet, but when drawn into any discussion did seem to hold a rabid Socialist view.
Having mentioned about atomic bombs, one calls to mind that there was a lot of futuristic experiments going on, not least of these was for rocket propulsion for putting men into space as well as to putting atomic bombs into the right area with the same means.
On the cliff top above Scratchells Bay, which is an almost inaccessible beach east of the lighthouse, and into which we had a full view, there was such an experimental station. All we could see was a few brick buildings and a square chimney. Periodically we would see large fuel bowsers draw up to the buildings and a few days afterwards great gushes of white steam would be emitted.
Before hand a warning would be given; I forget by what means, but we were supposed to take cover when this happened, not that we ever did. The era has now passed and when I last went to the island in 1986 I cannot recall seeing any sign that it ever existed. Even the Coast Guard station is now disbanded
I mentioned that the Lymington Flower Society provided the first wireless set to a lighthouse in 1928, following that and subsequent donations from other sources to other lighthouses, Trinity eventually equipped all lighthouses. With the T.V. set, having set the mode one or two other institutes supplied these also, notably through a restaurant in Penzance, which supplied the 'Western Rocks'.
The same thing followed, but this was really an effort by Trinity to get a standard power supply applicable to all sets, so that when one came in for repair, and a replacement set issued, subsequently the repaired set could be passed on to another station as a similar stop gap.
It was whilst I was at the Needles that Trinity did me one of the dirtiest tricks of all. There had been a series of postings and transfers going about, and I knew I was near the top of the list. When I joined I had been advised that I would probably wait 12 months for a permanent posting, but Ron; who had joined with me, only went 9 months. I had already gone 19.
I was also desperate for housing, during my stay at this lighthouse I had been in receipt of fairly frequent mail, as the boatman who did the local contract work for Trinity also ran trips around the lighthouse from Alum Bay during the summer. Very convenient. My wife had been visiting various properties, at the same time we did not want to get committed to something local to where I now lived, then be posted perhaps to North Wales.
Therefore during my second month or about the time of the relief I wrote to Trinity, asking if they could advise me as to when I might expect a permanent appointment, and explained the reason why. The reply came back to the effect that they could not advise me in this respect. This being the case I arranged with my wife that we would agree and complete forms on the 28th August, during the first week when I got ashore. This we did.
During that leave I got notice, that from the 15th of August I had been appointed to Bardsey Lighthouse. This was from a date before I had asked for and been refused information to my benefit.
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