50 Fun Facts About Lighthouses

The most famous lighthouse of antiquity, one of the Seven Wonders, stood at which city?

The Pharos was finished under Ptolemy II and was at least 100 metres tall; earthquakes between 956 and 1323 reduced it to ruins.

What was built on the site of the ruined Pharos in 1480, using its last stones?

The Pharos was the third longest-surviving ancient wonder, outlasted only by the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Great Pyramid.

The Tower of Hercules, the oldest known Roman lighthouse still standing, is in which country?

It overlooks the Atlantic at A Coruña, has been in use since the 2nd century and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009.

Which Irish lighthouse built by William Marshal is the world's second-oldest still operating?

Its first custodians were monks, and tradition says the missionary Dubhán kept a beacon on the headland as early as the 5th century.

The Kõpu Lighthouse, in continuous use since 1531, stands on an island belonging to which country?

It sits on the highest hill of Hiiumaa island and was once known by the Swedish name Övre Dagerort.

Henry Winstanley's Eddystone tower of 1698 was the world's first lighthouse to be what?

It lasted only until the Great Storm of 1703, which swept it away along with Winstanley himself.

What happened to Henry Winstanley when the Great Storm of 1703 struck the Eddystone?

During construction a French privateer had captured him, and Louis XIV ordered his release, saying France was at war with England, not with humanity.

John Smeaton modelled the shape of his 1759 Eddystone lighthouse on what?

He also rediscovered the Romans' hydraulic lime, a concrete that sets under water, and locked his granite blocks together with dovetail joints.

Where can the upper part of Smeaton's Eddystone tower be seen today?

It was re-erected as a monument after the tower was replaced in 1882 by James Douglass, who was knighted for the job.

The Bell Rock Lighthouse, the oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse, is off which country?

Robert Stevenson built it between 1807 and 1810 on the Inchcape reef, 11 miles east of the Firth of Tay.

According to legend, how did the Inchcape reef get its better-known name?

Robert Southey immortalised the tale in his poem The Inchcape Rock; the wreck of HMS York in 1804 finally forced Parliament to fund a light.

Which Scottish family made lighthouse building a three-generation profession?

Robert, Alan, David, Thomas, David Alan and Charles Stevenson all built lights; the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was the odd one out.

Skerryvore lighthouse, southwest of Tiree, was built between 1838 and 1844 by which Stevenson?

The 48-metre tower southwest of Tiree took from 1838 to 1844 to build on a remote reef called "The Great Skerry".

Which Swiss scientist's 1782 lamp, with its steady smokeless flame, revolutionised lighthouse lighting?

Matthew Boulton manufactured it from 1784, burning whale oil, colza or olive oil, and it stayed standard for over a century.

Which French physicist developed the multi-part lens that bears his name for lighthouses?

His lens captured 85% of a lamp's light against 20% for parabolic reflectors; he died of tuberculosis at 39, days after receiving the Rumford Medal.

The first Fresnel lens was installed in 1823 in which French lighthouse?

Its light could be seen more than 20 miles out, and the lens increased a lamp's luminosity by a factor of four.

Which country's oldest lighthouse, the 'Patriarch of Lighthouses', was completed in 1611 at the Gironde's mouth?

Designed by Louis de Foix as a Renaissance masterpiece complete with a domed chapel, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.

What is the tallest lighthouse in the United States from base to tip?

The 210-foot tower stands on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, guarding the shoals known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

What was done to the tallest lighthouse in the United States in 1999?

The "Move of the Millennium" left the tower 1,500 feet from the shoreline and won an outstanding engineering award.

The black-and-white barber-pole spiral on the Hatteras tower is an example of what?

Nearby lighthouses of similar shape get unique paint patterns so sailors can tell them apart in daylight.

Which was the first lighthouse built in what is now the United States, first lit in 1716?

The British blew up the original tower as they withdrew in 1776; the rebuilt light is still the only one staffed by the US Coast Guard.

Which is the oldest working lighthouse in the United States?

It was built in 1764 by Isaac Conro and later served as a backdrop for the final episode of the soap opera Guiding Light.

Which president ordered construction of Portland Head Light, the first US government lighthouse?

Work began in 1787 with a $1,500 fund he established and the light was completed in January 1791.

Which Union general built many Atlantic and Gulf lighthouses before winning at Gettysburg?

Colonel Orlando Poe, Sherman's engineer at Atlanta, later designed some of the most exotic lights on the Great Lakes.

Which lighthouse-turned-tower in Saudi Arabia has a credible claim to be the world's tallest?

At 431 feet it doubles as an observation deck and port control tower at the entrance to Jeddah Seaport.

Split Rock Lighthouse in Minnesota was built after a 1905 storm damaged or sank 29 ships on which lake?

The Mataafa Storm prompted the $75,000 tower, first lit in 1910 and now considered one of America's most picturesque lights.

Lighthouse keepers were nicknamed "wickies" because of which task?

They also refilled fuel, wound the clockwork that turned the lens and kept the glass spotless.

How many keepers vanished without trace from the Flannan Isles Lighthouse in December 1900?

The relief crew found the clocks stopped and a set of oilskins still indoors; the 2018 film The Vanishing is based on the mystery.

Which detail in Wilfrid Gibson's 1912 Flannan Isles ballad is not supported by the actual findings?

The real relief crew found unmade beds, an unwound clock and a coat still on its peg, but no half-eaten dinner.

In the 1801 Smalls Lighthouse tragedy, what did keeper Thomas Howell do with his dead colleague's body?

The wind blew the box apart and an arm hung within view of the window, yet Howell kept the lamp lit for weeks alone.

Grace Darling became a heroine in 1838 for helping rescue survivors of which wrecked paddle-steamer?

She and her father rowed a 21-foot coble nearly a mile from Longstone Lighthouse to reach nine survivors on the Farne Islands.

American keeper Ida Lewis, famous for her rescues, tended which Rhode Island light?

Asked whether rowing was unladylike, she replied that only a donkey would consider it unfeminine to save lives.

Brittany's La Jument lighthouse became famous in 1989 through what?

Keeper Théodore Malgorn had stepped out of the door to look at the helicopter and dashed back inside just in time.

How did Denmark save the Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse from falling into the North Sea in 2019?

The 720-tonne tower rolled to safety in October 2019 after shifting sands had already buried its outbuildings.

Which New York Harbor monument did the US Lighthouse Board administer from 1887 to 1901?

Despite the Board's efforts, the torch produced only a faint gleam and the statue was virtually invisible at night.

Bishop Rock in the Isles of Scilly holds which Guinness record?

Ocean liners chasing the Blue Riband transatlantic record used it as their finishing mark.

Fastnet Rock off Ireland is nicknamed "Ireland's Teardrop" for what reason?

It also names a sea area in the BBC Shipping Forecast and is the turning mark for the Fastnet yacht race.

Robert Hamblin invented the first modern lightship in the 1730s and stationed it where?

The first US lightship followed at Chesapeake Bay in 1820, and America had 56 lightship stations at the 1909 peak.

Blind Irish engineer Alexander Mitchell invented which kind of lighthouse?

His piles were screwed into sandy or muddy seabeds; the Maplin Sands light in the Thames began in 1838, though Wyre Light was lit first.

Which Swedish engineer's gas light, with an automatic "sun valve", dominated lighthouses until the 1960s?

His Agamassan substrate stored acetylene safely, and the sun valve switched the lamp off in daylight.

Many remote Soviet lighthouses were powered by what unusual source?

After the USSR collapsed, records were lost and scrap thieves stripped some units without knowing they were radioactive.

Which body looks after lighthouses around the coasts of England and Wales?

Scotland and the Isle of Man are covered by the Northern Lighthouse Board, and Ireland by the Commissioners of Irish Lights.

In the United States, lighthouses have been maintained by which service since 1939?

The old US Lighthouse Service was merged into it that year; the last civilian keeper, Frank Schubert, died in 2003.

Roughly how many staffed lighthouses does Canada still maintain?

Machias Seal Island's light is kept staffed partly to assert Canadian sovereignty in a boundary dispute with the United States.

Why was Old Point Loma lighthouse in San Diego replaced by a lower tower in 1891?

Point Reyes in California was likewise placed below the clifftop so it stays visible under low cloud.

Paired beacons that a navigator lines up to stay in a channel are called what in North America?

The British call them leading lights; the rear light is almost always taller than the front.

What is the glassed-in housing at the top of a lighthouse that holds the lamp and lens called?

Below it is the watch room where fuel was stored and the clockwork kept, and outside runs the open gallery used for window cleaning.

Richard Henry Brunton designed 26 lighthouses in the Meiji era for which country?

The Scottish engineer's towers became known as Brunton's "children".

A Fresnel lens focused roughly what share of a lamp's light, versus about 20% for parabolic reflectors?

Fresnel lenses are ranked by order, with a first-order lens the largest and most powerful and sixth-order the smallest.

Which industrialist first manufactured the Argand lamp in 1784, in partnership with its Swiss inventor?

Fuelled by whale, colza or olive oil, the lamp became the lighthouse standard for over a century.