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This is the story of the time spent on duty at the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse by former lighthouse keeper Harold Taylor, a typically short tour of duty that that began in October 1972 and was completed 12 months later.
The move to this lighthouse simplified many things for me, first of all because of the helicopter relief. The airport was only about 4 miles from home, so having gone along the day before to get all my stores together, I could remain at home until I knew that the helicopter was on its way to the airport.
I did this with co-operation of the Air Traffic Control, who would ring me up once the plane was in the air, saving me hanging about at the airport for hours on end if the plane was delayed by fog. From Shoreham it was about a twenty minute flight to the lighthouse which is about 12 miles off Eastbourne and replaced a light vessel which had been anchored on the spot before.
Here I must back track again to add more recall. Alderney was open for visitors but we did not get many, and most of those that came were islanders who brought visiting family members, or guests they thought very little about paying for our inconvenience.
One day I had a very pleasant lady with two children who had arrived by cycle. After they had departed I remarked about her similarity to Julie Andrews. I was then told that it was a possibility as her mother lived on the island and she very often visited with her two children.
The troubles in Ulster had started before I moved to Alderney, and there had been considerable disagreement with Dermot. He despite being employed by Trinity; because he could not reach the requirements for the Irish Lights, was extremely anti British and very much an I.R.A. supporter.
Yet he was willing to have his passage backward and forward to Dublin paid for him. I might add that it was during my short stay on the Nab that Trinity had decided to pay all travelling expenses for all keepers, which entitled them to subsistence as well.
I think it was soon after I arrived on Alderney that 'Bloody Sunday' erupted. This caused quite a stir on the island among the large number of Irish. The island was still used as a training base for the British Army, who always seemed to have a presence in some form or other. Later this was to become a rest centre for many of the troops who had done their tour in Ulster.
The island also had quite a large Catholic population and a modern church recently dedicated. It was with pleasure that for the first time since I had joined this job that I could attend a service on a fairly regular basis.
As a prelude to my move from Alderney, Peter Edwards had arrived on the island on one of his welfare visits. He did not discuss it with me at the time, but before he left the station he invited me to dine with him at the hotel on the quay, where he was staying.
When I met him that evening he enlightened me with the fact that Trinity realised they had made a 'cock up' by sending both me and Ray to the island, and now that the short handedness at Casquets was over, they had decided to do something about it. They were therefore going to transfer me to the Royal Sovereign.
I questioned as to why they should transfer me and not Ray, the reply was that if they transferred Ray, that would demote Bill Fagg. My reply was what the bloody difference did that make, they were demoting me. Sod Bill Fagg he seemed to lead a charmed life, no one wanted to offend the drunken sot, the bombastic bastard.
On board when I arrived was Bill Fagg as keeper in charge and Tom Parker. Bill was only a few months senior to me although several years older, we had met when we were Supers. going to the Channel Islands. Tom, was older than each of us, he had also been in the service before us.
When I went to Bardsey he had been K.I.C. to one of the rocks in the circuit, but had left and became a bus driver. He had now rejoined.
We made quite a good team. Bill was master of everything; or at least that was his opinion, and as he was, in charge I allowed him to think so, but in fact he was also the cause of many errors. The most significant of which were caused by a design fault surrounding the whole of the tower, or cake stand as I prefer to regard it.
As not many people know, smokes natural propensity is to go downward, or at least the designer's belief was. Therefore the boiler room for the hot water and central heating of the tower was set fairly centrally in the establishment in a room leading off from the engine room. In order to help the smoke on its way downward an extractor fan was incorporated in the flue.
This was fine as far as it went. But in the engine room were set two large extractor fans to remove the heat from the engines. These were each about four times more powerful than the boiler flue extractor fan, with the result that despite the boiler room door being closed they overcame the flue fan causing the fumes to be brought back into the engine room.
This also resulted in bad fuel burning in the boiler and there would be numerous times that the boiler would fail because of chocking itself. Up till the time I left there was no need to have had the engine room extractor fans on anyhow. There were open vents into the atmosphere facing east and the engine room was like a freezer room. Bills attitude was that the extractor fans were to be switched on for cooling the engine room, and he would not see that they were not needed and were in fact causing other problems.
Tom Whiston was the P.K. and I did my second month with him, but when I returned for my second turn on station Tom was sick, and I became Keeper-in- Charge. This is where rationality of Uncle Tom breaks down.
Whereas on the Nab, with the only sophisticated piece of machinery being an ancient Radio Beacon, he would not allow one to go off with two S.A.K.s, here where everything was sophisticated and almost experimental I was sent off one turn with two S.A.K.s, Martin Wild and a Geordie lad Cooney.
Martin was coming to the end of his apprenticeship, and Uncle Tom seemed to know his mother very well, because he told me to look after the fellow. We were there for the Xmas relief, but I cannot remember any significance about it.
I do recall that it was pretty cold and because the engine room vents had not got any wind shields on them the wind and snow blew straight through, and the snow lay on the engine room floor. Needless to say I had turned off the extractor fans because they caused the heating boiler to close down. This then let the boiler function properly.
There were so many anomalies with this place, I wrote in a long letter of complaint to Trinity calling the whole project a 'White Elephant' that I do not expect went down too well. I could list so many. The builders had been given a free hand and they built what they considered necessary.
I expect if it had not been for that, we would not have had central heating nor carpets in our rooms, nor a sitting room. The workshop was more or less an accident as the builders needed it themselves.
The place was built on the lines of a ship. There was a central watch keeping place at deck level, where one could keep a watch all around, with a consul by which one should be able to control all functions. But because of Trinity's interference you could not. There was problem with the windows, all opening ones leaked. In part this could be blamed on Bill.
Unfortunately; Tom although a smashing fellow, was a mouse, and would not oppose Bill in anyway, and he held sway over the station. Bill would not report defects because he did not want workmen on the station. There were two reasons for this, one because he could not see eye to eye with them and their ways, and the other was because he considered he could deal with all things, which he could not.
About the only thing he could deal with, was the Radar, which was on station to keep observation on a remotely operated Lanby buoy situated about 24 miles away in the channel to mark the Separation scheme. I suppose when it was installed we were expected to have the set switched on all the time.
However the electric motor to power it was so noisy that it was impossible to have it on all the time. It drowned everything out, therefore we switched on twice a day and took spot checks. Bill did know something about this instrument, because in his R.A.F. days he had been a Radar operator. I got on just as well with the machine when it failed.
We also had a new design Radio Beacon, which was constantly failing.
That was all right as far as it went, but being so close to the French coast, and this busy shipping area, we were associated in a block of six stations, and periodically we would get messages that Paris was reporting our station was mal-functioning.
One of our big problems with this set was that the wiring insulation would break down. The first time that this happened with me; I had called for the assistance of a Radio Mechanic. Later I was able to deal with it myself until a final time just when I was leaving the station. Ron Nugent the R.M. was a good man and a Radio Ham, in fact I do not think he had any qualifications, but was acquainted with the Superintendent of that Dept. and that was how he got his job.
In the boiler room was another plant, it was a fire control system. Which contained a huge water cylinder, which had a microchip electric control circuit that filled up the system with sea water as soon as any had been used, so as to keep a specific amount for use. There were dotted about the building, about four hose points.
One of these was very conveniently outside the huge doors that led onto a working deck about 60 feet above the sea. Here we did most of our fishing, that is Tom Parker and I. The others did not fish they only ate it. This hose was very useful for washing down after we had cleaned and gutted the fish which we then froze.
This system broke down, but we were not aware of it immediately other than we noticed that the pump was constantly running and no hoses were open. I cannot think for why, but for some reason I had to look in the chambers below our living room floor, where I found that the area was flooded.
On searching around I eventually found that a copper pipe below the main watch room had ruptured due to Electrolysis, and all the seawater was being pumped under the floor. We therefore had to detach the sophisticated wizardry and put the fire control pump on manual control. Another reason for my complaints about the station, was not that they were uncomfortable, but that they had intended them to be more comfortable.
One thing that had to be left out of our bedrooms was a set of cupboards, because, they had not mapped in the area that a radiator would occupy.
The sitting room was luxurious as far as things went. Very good easy chairs, television, radiogram and an enormous supply of records which seemed to be disc jockey rejects.
Oddly enough I had never heard nearly all of them, yet to-day, 25 years on, many are being played frequently. I suppose it shows the dearth of good 'pop' that is around, or that the music was before its time. There was one sad disappointment about this room, in that Bill kept an escape door locked, and Tom would not over rule him on the subject.
This evolved round the following circumstances. Around the outside of the building had been constructed a 3 feet wide cat walk, which consisted of a planked area. These planks were about 2 and a half inches thick and set about 1 inch apart.
They had been 'cooked' in pitch similar to telegraph posts. The trouble was that with a good hot sun on them, they would ooze tar. This resulted on people walking around the outside, getting it on their shoes. If they were not careful it trod into the building. With the sitting room being carpeted there was a risk of spoiling this.
However the sitting room gave a quick exit from the building and saved a lot of time walking half way round it to get on the sitting room side which caught all the sun. It was a favourite place to sit in sunny weather, even early in the year.
When Bill was ashore I took advantage of the opportunity and acquired a sheet of hard board to place inside the door. This enabled one to enter the building and take off ones shoes if they had become contaminated.
Another thing I did, was to go round the building in a very laborious process and scraped off all the visible tar, then sand any sticky areas. In subsequent years; after my departure, the works department applied a special paint, which they reckoned would keep the tar at bay.
This side was also the best for fishing from, and made it very convenient for carrying out that hobby whilst on watch as one would also be outside the watch room and could hear if the telephone rang.
Fishing was a great pastime for some of us, and we would often spend all the evening and even the night watch doing it, depending upon the state of the tide. The tide could be very fast, so about one hour either side of high or low water was about all you could do, otherwise ones weight would be pulled off the bottom.
Before I went there, there had been one cod caught, but I caught several. I was more of a bottom fisherman than others who tended to use feathers for either mackerel or pollack. When I got bored with catching fish I would try for conger eel. I also started the fishing for crabs and lobsters. But that was later.
My first cod was nearly a disaster. I hooked this beautiful beast, but could see no way of landing it, especially as the tide had started to run a bit fast. Bill was called into action, he lowered over the net they had been using, but was inadequate for the purpose as the fish was longer than the width of the entrance.
With difference in the weight of the two items we had difficulty at 6o feet up marrying the two together. In the end the only way was to risk the lead parting, and pulling the fish out of the water so that the net could be moved underneath, then letting the fish slide in tail first. It turned out to be a 21 lb fish the largest to be landed to that date.
I had another miserable escapee later that turn when Bill was ashore. Tom Parker. had just landed four glorious pollack on one hand line with my assistance. This he had called for as he could not haul in by himself, they were all close to 5 lbs in weight each and had to be hauled all that way up gripping a very thin line.
Later intending to go hunting for the same type of fish, I had dropped over a hand line instead of using my rod. This had on it a set of feather lures which were intended for cod, but up to that time I had never heard of anyone catching cod on these type of lures. They had an 80 lb breaking strain.
I was just hauling the line in when I had this massive heave on the line and thought I had fouled something. Then I felt this tumbling action which I had come to recognise as cod like. As I got whatever it was to the surface I saw this huge white shape in the water which was about 4 times the size of anything I had caught before.
I gave a cry for help and Tom P arrived, but we could see it was hopeless to try and use the net as the width from back to belly was nearly as wide as the mouth of the net and that had three strings across attached to the drop line.
There was only one thing for it, try and haul it up with the helpful knowledge that the breaking strain was 80 lbs. It was a hand tearing job and we were inching it up slowly. We had only got it up about twenty feet when the lead snapped and the lucky fish splashed back into the water. A fisherman's yarn perhaps, but I reckon that fish would have gone over the 50lb mark.
Continued in part 2.
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