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.
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
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