The fate of Irish Lightships

Phantom I. It is 1928 and in those days there was no such thing as a standard body. R-R supplied only the chassis and owners told their favourite coachbuilder what they wanted. Having said that, this car started life with a formal cabriolet body. In the 1940/50 time frame it was converted to a hearse (many early cars suffered this fate). In 1963/4 an enterprising bodyshop took off most of the hearse body and built the current touring body. It then went to the USA for about 20 years and came back to the UK in 2001. I bought it early in 2002 and started the restoration to what you see now.
D

This snippet is not about Simon’s ship, but I thought you readers would be interested (and saddened?) to learn of the fate of such vessels when they are neglected. Down in S Wales on the River Neath (or should I say in the River Neath?) LV32 is a sad sight, with high tides washing over her decks, below decks full of silt and rust eating away at her. (Photo).


Nearer to home, a lovely old vessel – the good ship Ena – on the same causeway as Simon’s ship, has for a long time been struggling to stay afloat, with bilge pumps going almost full time. Now the battle is lost as the pumps are no longer coping/working and there seems to be nobody interested enough to do anything.(Photo)



Presumably the owner is paying the mooring fees, a cheaper alternative perhaps than doing something about it, but not a good advertisement for a Marina!
David

I stumbled (literally) over an unidentified feature on the ship last weekend. Basically it is a hole in the deck just aft of the forward companionway. Simon has always had it covered with a metal plate, so I had not noticed it before. Removing the plate revealed a properly constructed circular hole (Photo), which would have been level with the teak deck when there was a teak deck. It is not sturdy enough to support a mast, so I guessed at ventilation. Back home I got out the blueprints and had a close look at that area. I found a circle with the label ‘8” DL’. Nearby were two other circles, both labelled ‘5” DL’. (Photo)

These two holes gave me the answer. On page 23 of Anthony Lane’s book Guiding Lights, are two photos of ‘Deadlights’ which were glass blocks set into the main deck to allow light to penetrate the darker spaces below. It even states that the examples shown come from the ex-Irish Light vessel Cormorant.

Sure enough, Simon has two 5” glass blocks which are shaped rather like grapefruit squeezers and fit nicely into two holes near the deckhouse (Photo). Unfortunately there is no trace of the 8” glass. From the plans I saw that the 8” DL illuminated the crew’s mess area and the two 5” DLs illuminated their quarters. There is one other 5” DL on the starboard side, to illuminate the officers’ quarters (no glass unfortunately).

Perhaps illuminate is too strong a word, but then two 5” DLs and the 8” hole certainly provide enough light down there to enable you to move around (Photo).

While studying the blueprints I came across several other labels. Along both sides of the deckhouse there are several ‘T.V.’ items and their shape on the plan is that of fixtures which are still in place (Photo). These, according to the blueprints, are ‘Torpedo Vents’. Why are they double ended?

There are about a dozen circles marked along the deckhouse walls, but only two portholes on the ship (that is one of them below the TV). However, most of them (not these two) are labelled ‘BL’ and this turns out to mean ‘Borrowed Light’. Because I have reached my maximum number of photos allowed per post, I will explain this next time.
David

I started this blog one year ago this week – can it really be that long? What a journey it has been! Simon has put and is still putting an awful lot of work into the deckhouse living space, but soon it will be time to turn his attention below deck. In the living room (or should that be the salon?), he will be finishing off with some special wallpaper. That shouldn’t be too difficult as that is what he does for a living – hanging special wallpaper! Then there are the three stoves that must be installed and hopefully they will be in and working in a week or two.

It is time to get serious about that exposed deck. The teak planks having long rotted away, there is no insulation between the outside and below deck, which not only makes it very cold down there in the winter, but also creates a great deal of condensation. When we had our first thoughts about this last October, we imagined a series of ‘joists’ made out of scaffolding type boards to provide a frame work. I even included some mock-up photos of this in my post at that time. Getting down to detail now we find that scaffolding planks are too thin – the step is 4 inches, not 1.5 inches – so we are now thinking of 4x4 fence post timber and the build-up will be in five stages and I apologise for my lack of skill in photo–faking:-
Stage 1. Simon acquired some time ago a number of big tins of bitumen and this will be melted and poured all over the deck (area by area) and the timber framing pieces wedged into position between the deckhouse and the 4 inch step. Hopefully the joists can also be secured to that step by angled screws. I know it looks like water in the photo, but it is supposed to be runny bitumen!

Stage 2. The insulating panels will be placed in between the frame joists.

Stage 3. Plywood boards will be screwed down to the joists to cover the insulating panels and the whole of the 4 inch step up to the large baulk of timber which runs right round the ship. All this so far we can tackle ourselves.

Stage 4. Call in the local flat roofers and lay a carpet of roofing felt over everything, with a small rise up the side of the deckhouse and again up the edging baulk. This will make the whole thing watertight – apart from drainage holes which are already present in the 4 inch step at the lowest part of the deck.

Stage 5. Simon has found some thick rubberised tiles which interlock and have channels cut into their underside. These will protect the roofing felt from wear and damage, while allowing any water to run underneath them and out of the drainage holes.

That’s the theory anyway!
David

Holidays over, it is time to get serious about the deck. I did some experiments (on the garage floor) with plywood and 4x4 timbers. To avoid excess movement/bounce/sag, the plywood covering has to be of reasonable thickness and well supported. Less of one means more of the other and somewhere in the equation will be the minimum cost point! But let’s be practical.
Our first plan was to use short lengths of scaffolding plank jammed between the deckhouse and the first part of the gunwale at intervals of 4ft (Photo). That is supposed to represent bitumen between the planks, not water! The insulation would fit between the planks and the whole lot covered with plywood from deckhouse to the main part of the gunwale. The plywood would be supported by and fixed to the planks and to the gunwale.
However, my experiments showed that on the deckhouse side, supported every 4ft, there would be definite sag unless the plywood was quite substantial (expensive). This would crush the insulation boards beneath and allow bounce. The other problem with the plank idea was that they would have to be doubled up to provide the 4 inch height needed to match the gunwale step. It would also degrade the insulation every 4ft for 9 inches, albeit slightly. (Photo)
The second thought was to run a 4x4 along the side of the deckhouse and use that to support the plywood throughout its run along the sides (Photo). The unsupported distance would be across the width and be only about 20 inches. There would be little or no sag and no break in the insulation.
The other practical point concerns the problem of rain interrupting the process. The ship (deck) is slightly banana-shaped so that water gathers amidships and drains through the holes you can see in the photos. If we have the side decks raised with timber and insulation and it rains, there will be large puddles at the bow and stern, which will have to be drained somehow before we can begin in those areas. So we will do them first. The stern is fairly straightforward and a simple grid of 4x4 will be fashioned to support the plywood. The bow is more complicated due to the companionway and the hawspipes (nostrils). Necessity is the mother of invention! (Photo)
The numbers indicate how many 2.1m x 1.2m insulation panels are going to be needed (roughly!). There will be off-cuts aplenty to fill in the awkward bits.
David.

I am back on the historical trail again, thanks initially to Harry Gibbons, who suggested that I contacted John Gore-Grimes, a Board member of the Commissioners of Irish Lights for many years. I am indebted now to John, who has come up with a copy of the original “Specification for Building a Light Vessel on the Composite or Combination Principle” dated April 1880 ‼ It is signed by one Joshua Cole, Com. R.N. Inspector of Irish Lights and Alex F Boxer, Assistant Inspector. It is 15 pages of detail about the construction of such vessels, plus two extra pages of details about the steel mast signed by W Douglass (sic). As Cormorant was built between 1876 and 1878, I am fairly confident that she was built to these specifications. Unfortunately although the text refers many times to drawings, none seem to have survived.
Until I find a dictionary of maritime terms, much of what is stated is double Dutch to me, but many of my naval-type followers will have little trouble with paragraphs like this one :-

SCANTLINGS
Keel
To be of best East India teak, amidship, sided 12 inches, moulded 13 ½ inches, to be in three lengths, the foremost length and after length to be of Irish elm, connected together with scarphs, the scarphs to be 5 feet long and to be vertical, each to have a tabling 3 inches wide and 2 inches deep, to be laid together with flannel and a heavy coat of white lead, and fastened with six through copper bolts 1 inch diameter, driven and clenched on copper rings.

At first sight I would have guessed the author to be the late Kenneth Williams!

To be serious, the mast pages have settled one question that was puzzling me. Several sources of information on the Cormorant have stated that she had a steel mast and fixed lantern, while others spoke of a lantern weighing over two tons which was ‘wrapped’ around the mast and hoisted about 30ft above the deck. This document talks about three wrought iron girders 36ft 5 inches in length, which should be attached “…perfectly true and parallel to the centre of the mast, ..…one of them, to be used as a guide for the lantern, is to be planed on all sides; the other two, which are to be used as a roller-path only, need not be planed.” To me this means the lantern was hoisted, not fixed.

Talking of masts, I had assumed that the Cormorant had only the two masts visible in the 1956 photographs on station in Belfast Lough – the main, stubby mast carrying the fixed lantern and the mizzen which was removed during its early days in Hoo. In my search for similar vessels pre-1943, I have discarded any with more than two masts. However, on Page 13 there are two wooden masts detailed – a foremast and a mizen (sic). They are both pitch pine, the foremast 54ft long and the mizen 50ft long. So I shall have to do my searches again and find vessels with three masts!

So, with the aid of a glossary I have found on the Internet, I shall begin translating the document into landlubberese. Watch this space.
David

Many thanks for that. Unfortunately CIL has revamped its website and Beam magazine no longer features. I have asked them if volume 25 is still available. By the way their website is now www.cil.ie
David

When I realised that Puffin could be called the sister ship of Cormorant, I studied the Board of Trade wreck report for Puffin even more closely. One item that I had missed was the statement “ ….facsimile masts had been used in the Cormorant ….(no wonder the two sets of measurements were so similar) and the Torch (I don’t remember coming across this name in my research on lightships). So now we have three sister ships – Cormorant, Puffin and Torch. However, the name Torch puzzled me as all these Irish light vessels were usually named after seabirds, which showed a bit more imagination than the Trinity House plain numbering system! Never having heard of a Torch bird, I asked the Internet. Guess what – nobody else had heard of one either, so I trawled for Irish lightships (as I have done many times before) and found Torch – built by Milford Haven Co., in 1881 and with overall dimensions and construction the same as Cormorant, albeit costing £600 more. She was withdrawn from service in 1945, sold and scrapped.
Having three trails to follow in my search for likenesses of pre-1943 Cormorant does not make me feel more hopeful. But many lines catch more fish – or at least they should. In my search for Torch, I came across the genealogy of the Douglass family and W Douglass supervised the building of the Torch and the Puffin. You may remember that the 1880 Specification for a Lightship had W Douglass signing off the lantern mast details. It is the same man.
William Douglass was born in London in 1831. Apprenticed to Robert Stephenson & Co, Newcastle-on-Tyne, he studied under Robert, the son of George Stephenson. In 1852 he replaced his brother James as Assistant Engineer to his father on the construction of Bishop Rock Lighthouse.
On completion of the Little Basses Reef Lighthouse in 1878 William was appointed Engineer to the Commissioners of Irish Lights, succeeding John H. Morant. Thus, the Douglass brothers achieved the unique distinction of serving simultaneously as Engineer-in-Chief to two lighthouse authorities. Both made their distinctive contribution to their respective organisation. James introduced electricity as a lighthouse illuminant while William perfected the efficiency of oil and gas as illuminants.
Over the next 22 years William's engineering design and administration output in the service of Irish Lights was equally as dynamic as the 26 years he spent in the construction of lighthouses for Trinity House. His tenure as the Commissioners' Engineer ended a relatively dormant engineering period in Irish Lights.
Many major works were carried out under the direction of William Douglass and from my point of view the following are pertinent:-
1881
Built the beacon on Muglins Rock.
New lightship Torch built.
Calf Rock station demolished by a storm-erected a temporary light on Dursey Head.
1886-87
New lightship Puffin built.

So another line of enquiry opens up. I wonder if his descendants have any records of the great man’s achievements.
David

Thank you Z. Yes I am in direct contact with both CIL and Dun Laoghaire. CIL did produce the 1880 Specification for Lightships, but have no diagrams to go with it. The Maritime Museum library is in chaos at the moment (new shelving and paintwork), so I will have to be patient there, but the Director of Library and Archives promises to be helpful when he can. Somewhere there will be a photograph or painting of one of the sisters .........

Perhaps it was for some sort of staysail, that would help the boat ride comfortably during bad weather.

The general concensus seems to be that the function of the sail/sails is to steady the ship in a rough sea and perhaps to keep her heading into wind. However, there is some discussion as to the configuration. I had a go at interpreting the 1880 specification and produced a diagram (Photo). However Patroclus (I am sure that is not his real name), a much better informed chap than I on nautical matters, has offered the following comments:

1. The lug yard belongs to the mainmast, not the mizzen (the head of the main lug sail is bent to it) - and the reference to “main lug” is a real problem. If the mainmast carried the light and paraphernalia as shown in the painting of the Daunt’s Rock lightvessel with the RNLI lifeboat alongside, how did they rig a lugsail on it? Perhaps we should be looking at a different type of three-masted lightvessel?
2. The ensign staff would be mounted at the stern in the normal place.
3. The mizzen boom would probably be hooped to the mizzen mast say 8 feet above the deck.

There is little doubt that the mainmast was too cluttered to have sails anywhere near it. Using a photograph of Cormorant as she is now (it’s a bit fragmented as I had to take several shots along the length), and knowing exactly where the main mast and the mizzen emerged from the superstructure, I have ‘resurrected’ these two masts. The hawsers (shrouds?) which supported the main mast had substantial anchoring points on both sides of the ship and these are still there, so I was able to approximate the run of these hawsers (Photo). I have left out any fore and aft supports and all those for the mizzen, but I have shown what I believe to be the boomkin with its sheave (for hoisting things on board?) and what I thought was the lugyard. There is no mention of a hoop on the mizzen.

Translating this to the grotty photo I have of Cormorant’s sister ship, Puffin, does I think give a good impression of what these vessels looked like (Photo), but I acknowledge that Patroclus is correct to worry about the reference to ‘main lug’.

I can add to that disquiet as the 1880 spec also refers to one fore and two main stay sails (one spare I assume) and two jib-headed mizzens (again I assume one spare). Where were these placed?

One more clue (or red herring?) is in the structure of the mizzen base unit (Photo). There is a substantial ‘boom-hinge’ mounted fore and aft on that unit. Is one for the boomkin and one for the lugyard? Please ignore the hanging nameplate. I made it to reflect my first impressions of the ship and Simon displays it. I wonder what those three rings were for.

Finally, although Patroclus thinks the ensign would be mounted at the stern, if that mizzen sail boom/lugyard is in the correct place, at 24ft it would extend about 6ft over the stern and preclude any ensign staff there. Perhaps the picture of LV72 at Juno beach in WWII shows where an ensign could be (Photo). Her mizzen is further back, but the ensign is definitely up top there. It is not possible to see whether it is attached to the mizzen or to a staff.
David
PS: Petroclus/Patroclus was a friend of Achilles, of uncertain parentage, killed a friend over a dice game and died when he disobeyed a direct order from Achilles.

In response to me plea for a helper in Dublin, David Ryan has volunteered to trawl through the collection in the National Library which was deposited there by the Commissioners of Irish Lights. Already he has found a photo of Cormorant and one of Torch dated 1908, when CIL sent a team around photographing all their lightships and lighthouses. There are a lot more albums to search through, but as each copy costs 30 euros, I am going to have to be selective if David finds any more.
Anyway, back to the exciting finds. Cormorant and Torch (and the ill-fated Puffin) were all built with a slender main mast carrying the ‘hoistable’ lantern, with a fore and a mizzen mast as well. This is what I have been asking David to look for. Well shiver me timbers and bamboozle me barnacles, look what he found (Photos).
Torch on station at the Three Barrels Rock and Cormorant on station at the Kish Bank – both with fixed lanterns and no foremast! “Quelle surprise!” Although these photos pose questions, they do also answer a few. Referring to recent posts about sails, Torch has a furled sail on the mizzen, which looks as though it is loose-footed (no boom at the bottom). The high-res photo shows that Cormorant has the same. Both ships are flying an ensign, but the one on Torch is fixed to the stay and wrapped around it! Cormorant has a normal staff on the stern. The back end (tack or clew?) of the sails are fixed to what would have been a bowsprit at the other end, but must be the boomkin mentioned in the 1880 spec. Torch has a fog-horn, but Cormorant has a bell. But enough of the detail for now – shall we just speculate why these 1908 photos are different from what we expected?
When the Puffin was lost with all hands in 1896, the enquiry decided that her mast (‘hoistable’) had been wrenched off, taking a large section of deck with it, precipitating the catastrophe. A two-ton lantern 30ft above the deck would not have helped matters. So perhaps it was decided that the design was unsafe and all the lightships of the ‘hoistable’ design were converted to fixed lanterns. There may of course have been other changes made at the time, so the details mentioned above may have changed from the 1880 spec.
This would undoubtedly have been a Board decision at both CIL and Trinity House. I intend to search for Board minutes of this period, but I am not hopeful any still exist. CIL have already told me that they do not have any, but perhaps they passed them on to the National Library with all those photo albums and they are another thing David can look for. I will ask Trinity House also.
David

Looking closely at that lovely old oil painting I bought (Post 80) ....."Is that a lugyard I see before me?" (to misquote Macbeth)
David