We found a break in the weather yesterday to finally make our visit to the lighthouse. The wind calmed and we dashed over in spitting rain (wipers on sunglasses would come in handy) to meet John and Madeleine from Chanceaux for our climb to the top. Given the weather, we had the lighthouse to ourselves.
The 89-foot tall, candy-striped lighthouse was built in 1862-1864 out of coral limestone cut from an adjacent quarry. At the time, the local community was opposed to the construction, fearing it would end the lucrative business of “wrecking,” luring ships by lantern light onto the reefs in order to salvage the ships cargo. (Wow – on-shore pirates.) Today, however, the Elbow Reef Lightstation, commonly known as the Hope Town Lighthouse, is a source of pride for Hope Town, Abaco, and all of the Bahamas. They fight for its preservation as the last manually-operated, kerosene burning lighthouse in the world.
The lighthouse originally showed a fixed, steady white light, but in the 1930’s, the British Imperial Lighthouse Service saw the need for a light which could be more easily identified by ships at sea. They were upgrading other lighthouses throughout the islands, so that brought over a fancier mechanism from Gun Cay and through a major refit the fixed light was replaced by a rotating Fresnel lens to translate a group of five white flashes every fifteen seconds, 120 feet above sea level with a visibility of more than fifteen nautical miles.
The lens and turning equipment are still in place today. The lighting source is a 325,000 candlepower “Hood” petroleum vapor burner. A hand pump is used to pressurize the petroleum (kerosene) which is in the heavy green iron containers below the lantern room. The fuel travels up a tube to a vaporizer in the burner which sprays into a preheated mantle. (Yep. Just like a giant Coleman lantern!) The Fresnel lens concentrates the mantle’s light into beams that shine straight out towards the horizon, rather than up, down, and all around like a camping lantern.
The lens, brass work, and prisms weigh three to four tons and float in a circular tub containing about 1200 pounds of mercury, or “quicksilver.” Weights on long cables are wound up to the top of the tower by a hand winch, and through a series of bronze gears, rotate the heavy apparatus once every 15 seconds. It works like a gigantic grandfather clock, and the keeper on duty has to wind up the weights every two hours. The lighthouse operates without electricity and continues to shine exactly as it has for almost 80 years!
Speaking of the harbor, here’s a great view of the narrow entrance channel referenced in an earlier post. Going out at high tide when the time comes.
Some more for the plant people:
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