Around the World
The History of Lighthouses
Course 8 · Chapter 7 · Lighthouses Around the World
Lighthouses spread across the world with trade, empire and the steamship. Each country built them in its own way, under its own authority, but the ideas and the engineers moved from place to place. This chapter looks at the French tower of Cordouan, the American system, the work of a Scottish engineer in Japan, the lights of the British Empire and of the Chinese customs service, and the international agreements that standardised sea marks in the 20th century. Names, dates and measurements are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
France: Cordouan
The tower
The Cordouan lighthouse stands on a rock in the mouth of the Gironde estuary, which leads to Bordeaux. It was built from 1584 to 1611 under the architect Louis de Foix, and is richly decorated, with a chapel and a royal apartment (check). It is often called the oldest lighthouse in France still in use.
The lens
It was raised in height in the 18th century and was the first to carry Fresnel's lens, installed in 1823 (Chapter 5, check). It has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (check).
The French system
France had a central lighthouse commission from 1811, and Fresnel was one of its members. This state-led system contrasts with the older British pattern of separate boards (check).
The United States
| Point (check each) | Detail |
|---|---|
| Boston Light | The first lighthouse in what is now the United States, on Little Brewster Island in Boston harbour, lit in 1716. It was blown up by British forces in 1776 and rebuilt in 1783. |
| Federal control | One of the first laws passed by the new Congress in 1789 made the federal government responsible for lighthouses, an early sign of how important they were for trade (check). |
| The delay | For decades the system was run by a Treasury official, Stephen Pleasonton, who kept to the cheaper reflector lamps and resisted the Fresnel lens. After criticism, a Lighthouse Board was created in 1852 and the lens was adopted (check). |
| Notable towers | Minot's Ledge off Massachusetts, a granite rock tower completed in 1860 after an earlier iron tower was swept away, and the Cape Hatteras tower in North Carolina, the tallest brick lighthouse in the country (check). |
| Moving a tower | In 1999 the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, threatened by erosion, was moved about 870 metres inland on rollers, a famous feat of engineering (check). |
Japan and Richard Henry Brunton
- The background. After 1868, Japan's new Meiji government wished to modernise and was bound by treaties with Western powers to provide lights on its coasts. It hired foreign experts, known as oyatoi, to build them (check).
- The engineer. Richard Henry Brunton, born in Aberdeenshire in 1841, was a Scottish railway and civil engineer who came to Japan in 1868 on the advice of the Stevenson firm of Edinburgh (check). He is often called the "father of Japanese lighthouses".
- The work. In about eight years he designed and supervised the building of some twenty-six lighthouses, as well as lightships, buoys and beacons, and trained Japanese engineers (check). The first lit was at Kannonzaki, near Yokosuka, in 1869 (check).
- The end. Disputes about cost and about authority led to his dismissal in 1876. He returned to Britain and later wrote a memoir of Japan (check). His towers still stand in several places, and some are museums.
The Empire and China
| Region (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Australia | The first lighthouse was on South Head in Sydney, built under the convict colony and rebuilt in 1818 by the architect and convict Francis Greenway as the Macquarie Lighthouse (check). |
| South Africa | The Cape Agulhas lighthouse, lit in 1849 at the southernmost tip of Africa, was built under British rule, and is a national monument (check). |
| India and Asia | Lights were built at ports under the East India Company and later the colonial governments, mainly to serve British trade (check). |
| China | After the treaties of the 1860s the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, led by the Irish-born Robert Hart, built lighthouses and buoys along the coast and the Yangtze river, financed by dues on foreign shipping (check). |
Lighthouses therefore served trade, and trade served empire. The lights were also useful to local shipping, and many are still in use. A careful historian keeps both facts in view (Chapter 10).
International Standards
- Colours and buoys. Before the 20th century each country used its own system of lights and buoys, which confused sailors. In 1957 the lighthouse and navigation authorities formed an international association to set common standards (check).
- Two buoyage regions. The system today has two regions, in which the colours of port and starboard marks are reversed, a legacy of compromise between countries (check).
- The lists. National lists of lights and international charts now use similar symbols and abbreviations (Chapter 5).
Exercises
Write a short profile of Richard Henry Brunton that separates the documented facts from the stories told about him, and say where you would look for each.
Compare the American, French and British systems of running lighthouses in a table (who ran them, when, and with what results).
Test the claim "Lighthouses abroad were built for empire, not for local people" with the six questions.
Quick Reference
- France: Cordouan (1611), the first Fresnel lens (1823) (check)
- United States: Boston Light (1716), federal control from 1789, the Lighthouse Board of 1852 (check)
- Japan: Richard Henry Brunton and the Meiji lights, 1868 to 1876 (check)
- Empire and China: lights built for trade by colonial authorities and the Customs Service