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Retired lighthouse keeper Harold Taylor continues his memoirs:-
A friend who lived locally to me at home bought a book at a sale, which was a bound copy of an address to the Institute of Engineers by Douglas, where he was questioned by an international body of engineers as his reasons for the methods he was adopting. This plank of bronze would have been placed across the doorway of the winch room, where the four notches underneath would have fitted into holes in a bracket on either side of the doorway which were still in situ and the reasons for which I had often wondered.
On the spigot should have been a signal lamp for communication with the keepers on Plymouth Breakwater. What they were supposed to reply with I do not know, because when I went there there was no signal means. Dave Mapp, who had been to the 'stone' had seen the lamp, which was oil filled. He requested its transfer to the Breakwater for talking to the Naval signal station just inside the harbour.
George Harvey was a Mason who first started on fixing the Low Light, and was the senior Mason, who retired. There was also a chap called Thorburn who was a strange creature and I believe got the sack. So mainly we had Jack Hoskins, ( the Mayor of Hale) as he sometimes addressed himself over the phone. He came with labourers at different times, one of whom was Fred Rosewall and another was Taffy Kemp.
The most precarious job they did was re-pointing the tower. This entailed coming down the tower on the outside in a cradle, where, by the aid of ropes the cradle would be pulled from side to side to get the biggest covering of area without having to re-fix the ropes on the gallery. This was because it took both the men's efforts to haul the cradle back up to the gallery once it had reached the bottom. Sometimes of course Jack would appear having made an entry through a window.
One visit we had was from the Navy, for some navigational and range purposes they arrived one day to fit some Radar or reflector apparatus on the stump. For this they sought our aid to get material there. To this end they landed a rating on the stump where he fixed a pulley to the 'mast' there.
They then took our winch rope and with the aid of another pulley we hoisted their gear up for them. It had something to do with gauging the range of the guns at Wembury, but was long after the shell incident.
We also had visits from T.V. people wishing to make documentaries.
I recall once a couple who were underwater specialists who intended featuring a peculiar tower of marble off Salcombe, but to fill up, did a piece on the 'stone' as well. One of their names was Heaven, but no relation to an earlier owner of Lundy. The other, Dobson has since done programmes on Children's T.V. They did send me a book one had written on Sub-Aqua Diving, as thanks for obtaining the book on Douglas for them to photocopy.
This had disastrous results, for when I wanted to borrow the book on another occasion, I was informed that those people had broken the spine of the book and now they would not let it out of their clutches. The fellow's sister was a Librarian at the British Museum, and having found there was not a copy of the book there, they considered it a valuable asset.
Weather was always one of our problems, not so much because it was there, but for the difficulties it caused.
We were quite happy, if the weather was bad, there was no relief, but the skipper of the ship was not always satisfied, and so he would want hourly reports, to know whether to set sail. He would want these throughout the night, and would not accept them from anyone other than the man in charge.
We tried to circumvent this sometimes but it usually meant we were dragged very reluctantly from our bed. It was not so bad after Porky Parsons was promoted Inspector of Marks. He was chased by the Superintendent. I remember on one occasion that we had bad weather for something like ten days and the ship had not been able to do the reliefs to the Bishop Rock or the Seven Stones Light vessel. They had put in twice to renew veg. that had gone off.
Our relief was coming up and we could see by the weather pattern that our relief could be done on time, but the ship had been sent to stand by St. Ives to replace a buoy which had gone adrift. It was obvious that they could not do the job, but they stood by too long before leaving to carry out our relief. As they came down the weather deteriorated again.
By the time they reached us they were about half an hour behind the weather and the relief was lost again. However there was a lull overnight and they were able to complete it at first light, landing us in Plymouth.
I was not so lucky the day my father died. He died the day I was due home, but the weather was bad.
I give the Superintendent his due, he sent the ship down to stand by to get me off at the first opportunity, or the last, to get me home for the funeral. We nearly made it. By careful study of the water we reckoned that there would be a half hour period where it might be possible.
As it so happened as the ship put their boat in the water a terrific squall with ferocious rain came down. By the time it had cleared the moment was lost. The skipper at that time was Matheson, who later died on the job of a heart attack.
Eventually, I was 14 days overdue, the longest that I had experienced. I was very lucky in that respect, my previous longest to that date had been 3 days getting on the rock and 4 days getting off, although by the same token I had been unfortunate in other respects. I believe I had 4 consecutive Xmases on station.
Weather can be a funny thing. You can have a big blow, and be stuck for weeks. Another time you can get off the following day, that is why it needs experience to calculate the conditions. Forecast are very useful, and they are better now than when I was on the rock. It all depends from where the weather is coming.
If you have a big South West blow, that is the worst. If the wind just drops, the sea has built up and it may take two or three weeks for the sea to die down unless there is a cross wind to assist it. If you have an Easterly blow, as soon as the wind drops so does the sea die down very quickly.
What one really likes to see after a s.w blow is for the wind to veer and blow equally strongly from the a northerly direction, to cut across the waves and reduce them. That way you can very often have a relief condition in twelve hours. If you can rely on the forecast; this usually depends on whether there is an cyclonic or anti-cyclonic situation in the offing, you can reasonably estimate your chances.
I only ever recall having one nasty bugger on the 'stone' and that was a mechanic called Dyer. He arrived with Duncan on a service. He was comparatively new in the job. He was a motor cycle fanatic as I recall. He had a funny attitude all along, but after he had been on station about a week, Duncan, who had stayed up late, knocked some papers of Dyer's on the floor, and when he picked them up noticed his own name in some of the writing.
Being curious he read on and found that the chap had been keeping a sort of diary come commentary on us all. I was apparently described as a Bourgeois type. I never saw the writings myself. Duncan had a few words with the fellow and later when they were going home by train, and after a few beers, had a 'set to' with the chap.
I had continued my knitting hobby whilst on station, knitting many things for the family and for others, including Stan. As the result of my appearance on 'What's My Line' I was approached by a Woman's magazine about my knitting hobby. This eventually led to the family being featured in an issue of the 'Woman's Realm'.
I remarked earlier about difficulties with late trains from Plymouth, we did not have this problem when boarding the same train that left Penzance at about 9.30 p.m. When I had once been put ashore at Milford Haven, we had a similar situation about boarding a night train. Apparently it was put on by the Oil Refinery people for carrying their personnel, so before we could board, they had to get the o.k. from Cardiff although the train might be empty.
Once we had got to Cardiff we had to get permission from the Station Inspector to stay on the train to proceed to London. This did not worry me as I would leave it there anyway to travel coast wise down to Worthing.
On one of these trips I heard of the accident when some mishap occurred with equipment inside the huge chimney and three fellows had not only hurtled to their death but were disfigured by projections on the inside of the chimney.
Another time I travelled with a group of town officials, who had discovered in their basement about 50 sets of bowling woods, which they were eager to dispose of in the simplest fashion. I had suggested I would have a set for a nominal sum, but they were only interested in disposing them in one lump for a fiver as they were unsorted.. I was not in a position to see them, and I often wondered what happened to them. I do not believe at that time Milford had a green from what was said. It is odd the conversations one picks up in railway carriages.
Another time; it was earlier in the day, like the previous ones were. This time it was in the evening, as the railway workers were going home. They were all pigeon fanciers and they were discussing having been out on a hunt the previous week-end, shooting Peregrines and destroying their nests.
This was at a time when these birds were already suffering extinction due to pesticides. Yet not long afterwards I heard a broadcast which discussed a similar situation with pigeon people where they completely dis-associated their organisations with any extermination of predators.
I also had some funny returns to Penzance. One of these was when they were considering setting up a Sussex Ornithological Society. The meeting was to be held at the Dome on the same day that I was due to return to duty, much to my wife's chagrin I decided to try and attend this meeting before I went.
I had already gone to Brighton to race, as I was still trying to keep my Race Walking going. I did not join the Society, for two reasons, one was that they were trying to make it too elitist by keeping the fee abnormally high, and second because the meeting had not finished when I had to get back home. There were a number of local wardens who were not in favour of the high fee, but because their livelihood was tied up with such organisations they felt duty bound to join.
I got home, and I think it was that occasion when we got to the bus stop to go to the station we saw the bus leave about 5 minutes early. When I contacted the bus office about this, they disputed it despite this being a fare stage.
Continued in part 9.
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