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By Root 721 0

lenses had been refined to a point of near-perfection, and the keepers had plenty to occupy them. Routine was stable but satisfying. Each keeper took a four-hour watch and during that time was responsible for ensuring that the light displayed the right character, that the fuel tanks were full and were feeding through correctly, that the winding mechanism (similar to that of a vast grandfather clock) was turning the light at the right speed, that the log books (containing weather, barometric pressure, wind speed and cloud base) were maintained and that nothing untoward was happening out at sea. The immense lenses would be polished early in the day, and the slim mercury bath on which they rested checked to ensure that nothing obstructed the smooth movement of the lenses. The machinery took half an hour or so to crank and ran down every two hours. If the keeper wanted to communicate with his colleagues, he used the mouthpiece in the lightroom. The only remaining example of the paraffin mechanism is at the first of the Northern Lights, Kinnaird Head, now a museum. Up in the lightroom, the lens glitters and shifts while the long chains of the winding mechanism turn without sound. The whole apparatus of the lens, with its brasswork and minutely angled prisms, weighs well over three tons, but one gentle push sends it turning as smoothly as cream in a churn.

Switches and electronic circuitry might be simpler but they scarcely compare to the polish-and-clockwork of the paraffin years. But with the advent of reliable electric lighting, there was no longer a need for fuel-burning lamps, however aesthetically pleasing they might have been. Electricity was capable of producing a beam of well over three million candlepower, could be increased or decreased at will, and dispensed almost entirely with the need for the immense storage tanks and winding mechanisms. Most produced their own power from diesel generators (mains electricity being both too unreliable and too awkward to be useful). The new lenses were less than a quarter of the size of the old and have decreased in size steadily ever since, while the elegant argand lamps have given way to a light only slightly larger than a domestic lightbulb. Electricity also possessed another vast advantage over oil or paraffin: it could be operated automatically. The need to have keepers perpetually on watch disappeared; the keepers merely had to press a switch on the wall, make the occasional check and leave the light to its own devices. And so, beginning in the 1960s, the NLB began automating the lights. An average of three lights a year would be adapted, and with them would go another huddle of keepers returning to civilian life. The NLB calls the process demanning; the keepers call it closure.

For the keepers, bred into fastidiousness over many generations, it is the mess of automation that is perhaps hardest to take. After the confusion and the bittersweet departure, the garden starts to silt with weeds, the paint cracks around the edges, the gutters drip, the rooms reek of damp, and the sea starts stealthily to repossess its old haunts. The major lighthouses were built to be occupied. Exposed to the elements, they need constant maintenance and regular check-ups. Though the NLB hopes that the costs will eventually come down, at present the price of keeping the automatic lights working efficiently is as much, if not more, than the price of employing three keepers. There is also something more elusive in their favour; something that, once lost, cannot be regained. As one keeper put it, ‘The human presence is still paramount. It must be. When you see people who are lifesavers going, that’s terrible.’ His main worry about automation is for those who needed the lights in the first place, the mariners. ‘Everyone knows that relying on GPS and satellite technology alone is complete rubbish,’ he says. ‘What happens when it fails? When there’s no one to report on boats in danger, or give out local weather conditions?’ The last generation of lighthouse keepers recognise the logic of automation, they