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I must have had a period of about two month ashore waiting to take up this appointment, wrote retired lighthouse keeper Harold Taylor, who took up his post for a short tour of duty on 10th October 1982, and continued, I am not certain of the reasons. One no doubt would be that the out going P.K. Graham Fearn would be anxious to gain as much visitor money as he could before he left, but it does not really take into account all the reasons.
For us it turned out to be a disastrous move. I was not to know it, but the other keepers were at each others throat and incompatible. They each had their own grudge against the Local Assistant Keeper, who was engaged on a permanent basis to provide the fourth keeper in line with the modern watch keeping arrangements that had been introduced since Double Manning had come into force in 1972.
There had been Occasional Keepers before who filled in for week-end duty and leave periods. This was the first time I had come across this experience.
Our move was carried out quite satisfactorily, except afterwards it was discovered that our refrigerator had somehow become damaged. I had quite a bit of difficulty in getting Trinity to pay for a renewal as they do not take out any insurance to cover damage.
Almost immediately however I was taken ill and was off sick from the start. It was then that I discovered the peculiar situation that was in being. Brian Stock was the senior hand, but it appeared that he was not taken into the confidence of Graham so knew little what was going on on-station. While Richard Kinver, a nasty creep knew everything and was especially deprecating toward the L.A.K.Rodney Burt. a likeable and inoffensive person.
It has always been a belief of mine that people can be left on a station too long especially when there is no change in command. Such had been the case here for Graham had been there for quite a number of years, which had led to considerable neglect which I will relate. On the surface all was spick and span, but underneath there was years of negligence.
On all electric stations there was 'stand by' equipment in the event of Mains failure. The end of the week that I eventually started work I decided to test the Standby Generator. I made several attempts to start the engine before I discovered that the battery was defunct.
There were two batteries, one usually in service the other as standby. The standby I also found unsatisfactory. Having been thwarted in this endeavour I decided to test the Emergency supply to the Fog Signal.
I met with the same result and found that the battery was almost dry of electrolyte. I put the battery on charge and 48hours later found that it had absorbed little power. On consulting Richard I was told that Graham had always charged up the battery the day before he tested.
He had told me the same with regard to the Emergency Lighting Plant, with which I had had no success either, he had not said that without this immediate charge the sets would not work.
About the time I went to St Cath's, Blackwall had appointed to each District a man they termed a Technical Officer (T/O) in view of the changing nature of the working. For our District this was Davey Jones, who was in the process of moving to the island.
I indented for new batteries for the equipment that would not work, but nothing materialised. Shortly afterwards, Davey visited the station and I told him of my dilemma. He immediately went off and came back with a heavy duty battery for the Fog Signal which cost £120. Subsequent to his visit the other batteries followed.
These incidents brought to light one or two things, Brian knew nothing of these defects because the P.K. always attended to them. I suppose Fog had never occurred during a power failure. It was then that I discovered that Brian was not made aware of anything about the station, and if I needed any information Richard was my only source if he was condescending enough to give it, and was he loath to give it. No one confided in Rodney although he was probably the only genuine character on the station to rely upon.
Once the Standby engine could be relied upon I tried again to carry out the test procedure, but this time I found that for some reason I could not get the system to work with the Main Light switched on, which it should have done.
The enquiry with the staff disclosed that none had ever seen the light in with the engine running, in fact none had seen the engine run longer than it took to start it and then it was turned off. So much for a practice of running the Emergency gear for one hour every week. How they had carried on I was never able to find out, for the mains failed quite a number of times whilst I was there.
I soon became aware of how bitter this hatred of LAK's was with some keepers With Christmas approaching I thought it would be a good idea for all the keepers to get together. I therefore informed all and sundry of my intentions, and found them all in agreement.
However of course I had not allowed for the fact that one never met everyone at the same time and had passed this message on as I met them. As Rodney did not live on station I decided to hold the gathering one night when he was on duty, his wife could come along and he could take her home after the completion of that watch.
LAK's had come into the job to fill a need, like them or hate them we were stuck with them.
When the elected date arrived I mentioned that Bernice, Rodney's wife would be coming along. Brian came along and stated he had forgotten a previous appointment and could not be there. Richard arrived and said that his child was ill and they could not leave her. So the evening proceeded with just Rodney and Bernice. Brian's wife had looked in for a few moments. I gather her husband had only gone to the local pub with a friend. The following day there seemed to be little wrong with the child of Richard.
I thought when I came to a shore station I was going be in for an easier time, living at home and having a 5 1/2 day week. This was quickly dispelled. When we were at full strength this was fine, but we were rarely so. In the first instant I did not know that Brian had put in for a transfer to a Rock Station.
Richard also wanted a transfer back to Cornwall. Like all Cornishmen, they think they have rights to all the western rocks. If there was a shortage by illness or otherwise to the Nab or Needles, it was considered that a hand could be borrowed from St. Cath's to make up the short fall. Since Double Manning this had resulted in Shore Stations, like us being compensated by paying us extra. This is of course all right over the short term, like a few days or a week here or there, as long as things get back to normal. When it goes on indefinitely it is beyond a joke and very wearing.
In theory if it is expected to be prolonged, we were supposed to be compensated by having a keeper from the Pool come along and make up for the missing keeper. This did not happen always because they had ceased to engage more trainees, and with retirements, wastage etc. the number on the Pool were not being maintained.
At one point we were 6 weeks with only three keepers, this meant that no one had a day off. Admittedly this short fall was because of keepers on the station taking their leave in succession to each other. l wrote in complaining of the situation, but got little help. Eventually the Pay Clerk from Swansea Depot; which now dealt with all wages rang me up, He was a fool by the name of Jaeger.
I had known him to be a fool since the day I joined when he had been a junior clerk at East Cowes. He hadn't improved with seniority. 'What's this I hear about you complaining about being short handed.'
'What I am complaining about is not having had a day off in six weeks.'
'Of course you had time off, you have every third day off.'
'How do you work that out when I have to work every day.'
' You get 24 hours clear of duty, that's a day off.'
' I only get that because I work 4 hours on the day before I have the 24 hours free of watches and 12 hours the day following I work for part of every day, like they did before Double Manning a 56 hour week. The way things are I would be far better off on the Rocks, at least I would get my month clear of duty after a month aboard.'
' If that is the way you feel, it can easily be arranged.'
'Well the sooner the better as far as I am concerned , How would you like to come into work every day including week-ends.' There the conversation ended, you cannot argue with fools like him.
Of course some keepers liked short handed working, it added to their pay packet, but even those get fed up after a time. For the others on station it was in some way beneficial. How it worked out, was that you shared the basic wage of an A.K. although in the early days of compensation they only paid that of an S.A.K.
So as far as Rodney was concerned he increased his wages. For an A.K. he was on par, but for myself I was paid less for the extra work, as well as having the extra bookwork to do. It was a totally unsatisfactory situation altogether in which the Union was unwilling to get involved.
My opinion on this is of course that the Union Rep was usually on a comfortable station, and if he rocked the boat too much, he might lose it. Trinity House have never earned any accolades for personnel nor business management in my book, and never will.
They are too concerned with putting on a Public Image than providing a Public Service. ' pull up the ladder jack, I'm inboard.' All I asked was that Trinity should uphold their moral obligation, which for their convenience they were prepared to overlook to most peoples disadvantage. Thankfully things were later taken out of my hands and I returned to the rocks.
There was another stupid bit of nonsense. I was required to report monthly on a subject that concerned in a way the coastal erosion or more correctly the instability of the land on which the lighthouse stood.
To monitor this, suspended by a wire, high up in the building was a weighted ball with a pointer, down the centre of the tower. On the floor were painted compass points. Due to the motion of the earth this weight swung in an elliptical motion over the compass points.
The object was to record the direction of the orbit, which would change if there was any movement of the land, at the same time one was to measure the distance from the centre of that swing. On going to the station due to the passage of time since the installation, the wire had obviously broken several times and in replacing the weight, the weight had got higher and higher, without any new wire ever being affixed.
There could never have been any near accurate reading taken for a very long time. I found a suitable length of wire and attached it to the old so that the pointer was now only about an inch off the floor instead of four feet.
A very much more accurate measurement could now be taken. As the result of which, even in two months I discovered quite a considerable shift, but no one seemed to take any notice, even when I drew their attention to it and reported upon the apparent tilt of the tower.
This was noticeable by virtue of the mercury bath. When I went to the station, as the lens rotated it touched all rollers at some time, but during my stay it was noticeable that it only touched rollers on one side and never touched within about half an inch on the opposite. I later adopted the attitude of ' Sod them. If they cannot be bothered, why should I?'
There were also some cracks that were visibly opening in the walls and tarmac drive near the tower. This may only have been due to drying out of the ground during the summer, but with my short experience of the station they seemed to me to be significant although they might have been seasonal.
I think it worth commenting here that at the time of my arrival on station there was a firm of contractors carrying out repairs to the stonework. They were absent upon my immediate arrival. There was also the contractual painters on station carrying out their mockery of maintenance.
The same firm that I had fallen out with at Sark a few years before. In fact several others of the family of the poor unfortunate lad who had been in charge then and had since lost his job. There was sequel a to these painters, who eventually left with their job uncompleted because the construction firm had not completed their work.
During some heavy rain after the painters had left I discovered that the entrance hall to the tower was flooded with water, which was coming through the ceiling of this single story section. Getting out one of the ladders and climbing on to the roof I discovered that there was a triangular hole in the lead sheeting, no doubt pierced by one of the painters scaffold leg bases.
On reporting this Taffy Kemp of the DLF arrived on the station and inspected the damage. All it needed was a blowlamp and a piece of plumbers metal and the hole would have been sealed in about half an hour. A job I could have done myself.
What happened was that Taffy went away and came back with a van load of material. He covered the whole of the lead roofed area with Bitumastic felt, spending about a week to carry out the job. A total waste of money.
Continued in part 2.
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