Monday, 16 March 2020

Final Tale of Four Lighthouses


We're groping to the end of my foggy tale of the lighthouses that illuminate the south western tip of Africa!
We've seen how the first Cape Point lighthouse was built too high up to be visible in fog, how its replacement at the base of the peak fixed that issue but was invisible from certain points to ships rounding the peninsula, and how a third lighthouse, Slangkop, was built at Kommetjie to finally ensure safe passage around the Cape.
Yet there's one more...

If you round the Cape successfully and enter False Bay on your way to Simon's Town, you're faced with the challenge of avoiding Roman Rock, rising up from the seabed yet often submerged at high tide. In the 1800s, it became clear to the Royal Navy that the rock posed a mortal danger to ships, especially those dropping anchor at night. After much to and fro with the Admiralty in London, construction of a lighthouse began in the 1860s. As with the previous structures, the project was challenging but in this case perhaps even more so. How do you construct a lighthouse atop a rock that is often awash and battered by gale force winds for much of the time? After 4 tumultuous years, the cast iron tower was finally completed, rising 17m above the waves at high tide. It was manned by a keeper and assistant who worked 7 days on and 7 days off. It must have been one of the loneliest jobs in the world. Once the lighthouse was automated in 1919, the keepers gratefully left the place to the wind and crashing seas.

By the 1990s, the onshore lights of Simon's Town and Kalk Bay threatened to blot out the 6 second flashes and it was decided to electrify the lighthouse. A helipad was built - with difficulty! - to allow for the delivery of supplies to undertake the work. Today, Roman Rock's light shines brightly to a distance of 20 km in all weathers, ensuring the safety of ships both large and small as they navigate in and out of Simon's Town dockyard and marina. It remains the only lighthouse to be built on a rock off the South Africa coast, and one of the few sited on individual rocks world-wide.


No comments:

Post a Comment