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The continuing memoirs of lighthouse keeper Harold Taylor:-
I was on station with Stan during June when the nights are the shortest, when Alf left. Let me suppose that Ron came in July, and started messing about with things. We did have an engine failure when I was there which was put down to overheating of the engine room, but when I was ashore on leave during August, and the nights were lengthening, there were several more.
The result of that was when I went off the next month an electrician, Duncan Blair went off as well. That first night I was turned in, as was Duncan. The alarms went and the tower was plunged in darkness, then silence as the engine stopped. Stan was on watch and we all went down to the engine room. Being a confined space I left the other two in there and went to the oil storage room to make sure all fuel taps were turned on, as initially the fault seemed to be fuel starvation.
Following the system through I got down to the engine room header tank, and its system of distribution cocks. I discovered that the cock that should supply the engine was turned away, and was only picking up fuel from a 'leak off' pipe. This carried surplus fuel back into the header tank.
These engines were very efficient, and it seemed that what had happened, was that Ron with all his interfering, had set this cock wrongly and the engines had been surviving on all the oil that was in the supply pipe from the oil store above, plus the leak off from the engines.
This had been satisfactory during the short summer nights but as the nights got longer, there was just not enough there. By virtue of the fact that the tank was topped up at midnight this had just avoided the deficiency from showing, but with the light being turned on earlier, the fault was now showing up earlier and earlier before the tank was topped up. According to Stan, Ron had been adamant that he knew all about the fuel supply and the cocks were to be left as he set them.
A hilarious incident which occurred when Ron was still on station came about when mechanic Bill Brown, and his mate, my name sake, Harold Robert Taylor were dismantling the Fog Jib from the roof. They were outside on the scaffolding when they came in and reported that they could hear the shells from Wembury Point Gun Range whistling overhead.
When they were firing, it was often the case that you would hear the whine if the wind was in the right direction, but the nearest one would ever see the splashes was about half way to land. This particular day they came in from the roof as did John Bell an S.A.K., with the story that the splash of the shell was only a few hundred yards away, which was unbelievable.
Ron was in the kitchen at the time being 'cook of the day'. I was in the lantern doing some maintenance, when I heard the commotion. The next thing I knew was that John was on the R/T. trying to contact Rame Head Coast Guard. We carried out a radio check with this station each morning and afternoon at a specific time, but failing bad weather they did not maintain a permanent watch.
Ron had instructed John to make this contact. As he was calling on the Distress frequency, Falmouth C.G. replied, and John blurted out, 'They're firing at us'. The C.G. was taken by surprise and said, ' Hang on, who is firing at you and what are they firing?' to which John went on to describe that we were under attack from Wembury Range and the shells were falling all around us, which was ridiculous.
Of course these few words took very little time to say, but as soon as I had heard the start of the farce, I commenced my way down the ladder and took over the set. The C.G. transferred me to the working frequency and we got communications started to the Gunnery Officer.
Of course all the National Newspapers monitor the distress frequency, so stories appeared in the press the following day of the Eddystone being shelled by our own guns. Questions were asked in Parliament, but the only evidence I have of all this is a cartoon. Many years later I met the Commandant of the Gunnery Range at the time, I think it was called H.M.S. Cambridge.
He told me that the whole affair was blown up out of all proportion. They had fitted new barrels to their guns that day, and new barrels tend to extend the range, but they could no where near reach the Eddystone. My opinion is, that about the same time there were some Gannets fishing in the area and their splashes had been observed.
When they got on with the job in hand they successfully smashed the gear section of the Fog Jib through one of the glazing diamonds. Fortunately, we carried several spares on station so they were able to replace it.
Soon after this Ron left us, Stan was made P.K. and therefore I became K.I.C.
As we had a good working relationship, there was never anything to go wrong. Stan did what he thought ought to be done and I did what I thought, and the station ran smoothly. We must have had a new hand to replace Stan, but I cannot think who, I seem to think that they did not stay long, and we were always breaking in new personnel.
About a year after I went to the station Plymouth Breakwater was closed down and made 'Automatic'. I use that expression guardedly. The light became permanent, fed by gas bottles and the bell initially became constant, until local protests caused it to be changed to a beam controlled noise.
Trinity had for years been engineering such a scheme, but it never worked, so they imported this device from Germany. It was not perfect, because it was too sensitive. It would go off just because a puff of smoke from some of the liners passed the beam.
I remarked earlier how we went down to the engine room in darkness to attend to the engines. It should not of course have been necessary, because when the modernisation had taken place, one of the provisions was for an emergency lighting system to be installed. That should have given us one bulb on each floor and staircase. The system did not work. It would not cut in. This was complained about time and time again, but no notice was taken of it.
About two years later when the Electrical Supt. Alan Frazier was on station I brought the subject up and proved my point. The question was looked into and the equipment was found to be under-powered and a new appliance was installed which worked.
This station had a television, supplied by a restaurant in Penzance. All the stations of the district that had a battery charging system had been supplied by the same person. There was only one snag with this arrangement. As far as our station was concerned, it was that the batteries were charged by discharging from the main Emergency bank. We did not have a separate source. This provided us with only about 2 hours viewing per day.
As the batteries were becoming more aged, so the duration was diminishing, except of course I put my skills to good benefit for ourselves and managed to get about four hours. But it meant doing un-orthodox things, with the result that when I was ashore, they were back to short viewing. So at the same time that I got the Emergency lights altered, I complained about the telly.
As Alan could see for himself during his stay we were very limited, with the power dying out during an interesting programme. He therefore did some shopping around and found us a Mains/battery set. This was a blessing in disguise, for it now meant that the set could be used 24 hours a day, if they were broadcasting that long.
It did mean that if you had visiting mechanics they stayed up with the set on, disturbing the sleep of those in the floors above. All in all it was a good thing.
Water was always a problem on lighthouses, here we did have a storage tank that held 3,200 gallons, but it still meant that each day one had to go down to the base to pump up the header tank in the kitchen. When one had visitors this could mean a lot of consumption.
One period when we had a Mechanic and Electrician aboard they were to fit an electric pump for this job. It was a pity they did not know what they were doing. I did not know that they were ignorant either, otherwise I could have helped them, having been a plumber.
They really made a mess of the job because, first of all they could not, or did not dry out the pipe they had to solder, on the other hand they had not prepared the wiping cloths for making the joints properly, with the result they took about two days to do a little job that should have been done in about an hour.
When they had succeeded, and discovered that all my advice to them had been made from experience, their comment, was,' Why didn't you say you knew what you were talking about'. They did not quite have enough of the right fittings to complete the job, but with bits from the odd and ends left about we were able to make the final coupling. The electric pump for filling the water tank was a boon.
There was still no water to waste. We did have rain water catchments, as on most lighthouses. As reported earlier, this had its draw backs being polluted by copper and soot. However, by an accident of circumstances, when I had been on the Smalls, I found a way round this problem, which I used to good effect for myself.
I was prepared to impart it to anyone prepared to make the effort. I had placed a bucket of rain water on the stove to warm up, and because of the hard nature of the water with the copper and soot, I placed a hand full of soda in the bucket.
When I came back I found that I had a scum on the top and a settlement on the bottom. I cleared the scum, poured off the bulk and threw away the sediment. I found that I had some beautiful clear soft water. This method I used on the Eddystone with good effect for my own clothes washing, and extra bathing done by standing in a bowl whilst pouring further water over me.
There was a down side to these little experiments. I recall that once; in the belief that the relief would not be carried out due to bad weather, I had prepared a bucket of this water and put it away in a cupboard. Suddenly the relief was on and carried out. When I returned after my months leave, by chance I went to this cupboard and found that the bucket was still there.
I went to pick it up, as I did, so the top four inches of bucket came away with the handle, where the corrosive substance in the scum, had eaten through the galvanise and the metal of the bucket. Powerful stuff.
One early giggle with Stan was when Clive Hearn had been on station, was a story of poverty?
Before coming out to the 'Stone', Clive had been on the breakwater, and apparently had little more than he stood up in. He had acquired some possessions, or his uniform had arrived. To carry this stuff he had found an old fish box on the breakwater and used it for his gear. He went ashore at the same time as Stan, and had wanted to share the taxi with him, but Stan refused to allow him to do so.
Clive was a funny cuss. He had apparently spent a little time in Australia, where he said he'd run a Missionary, probably the truth was that he was employed as a cleaner in one. Why he had come back to England was not explained, but whilst somewhere in Cornwall he had got tied up with some little old woman, who cleaned a pub where he indulged.
The upshot of this was that he eventually married her. He was about 30 and she must have been drawing her pension, certainly she had children older than him. There were many little stories later to emerge about him. I will relate a story that happened when he was with me that had a reaction later.
Continued in part 3.
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