Clyde Lighthouse Trust 1755 - 1965

The coal-fired Wee Cumbrae Lighthouse, built 400-feet above sea level in 1757 by James Ewing

CLYDE LIGHTHOUSE TRUST 1755 - 1965 For a relatively small service, The Clyde Lighthouses Trust more than punched its weight in innovation, it the first lighthouse authority in Great Britain or Ireland to be allowed to build lighthouses and to collect light dues for their maintenance and, in conjunction with the brilliant Stevenson firm of lighthouse civil engineers, its trustees and engineers developing the very first lit flashing buoy; the very first radio controlled automatic fog gun, the very first synchronisation of radio and sound signals, the first equiangular prism, the very first economical use of the silver-backed glass mirror system, the first fog horn installation in Britain with a regular designated characteristic and the first diaphone fog signals and first electric buoys in Europe. What follows here is essentially 'an expansion of the detail' in an article by Hector Mackenzie in the 2006 Newsletter (4th Quarter, Volume 4, Issue 4) of The World Lighthouse Society http://www.fyr.org/Pdffiler/4thqtr2006newsletter.pdf The addition and 'expansion' of this article is felt warranted on the grounds that much history is lost when, by reason of 'space limitations' on many websites, often dictated by by the rising costs of 'bandwidth' charges etc., newsletters, particularly and other 'important to some' webpages are deleted, the pdfcoke 'archives' and the pages of the websites associated with the uploads here, regularly trawled by 'The Internet Archive' http://www.archive.org/web/web.php which, operating since 1996, has managed to preserve 1

much valuable material which otherwise would have been lost to future researchers as many websites disappeared without trace after only a short life in 'cyberspace'. The Cumbrae Lighthouses Trust, set up in 1755 by an Act of Parliament, was the first public body to be established in Great Britain for the express purpose of erecting and maintaining lighthouses, beacons and buoyage and to collect light dues, these also to pay for the removal of shoals for the improvement of navigation below Greenock and any surplus of dues to be retained to provide equipment for Greenock Harbour and to improve the river above Greenock, in 1781, the constitution of The Cumbrae Lighthouses Trust was revised by Parliament and the authority became known as The Clyde Lighthouses Trust (CLT). Interestingly, at the time The Cumbrae Lighthouses Trust was set up, thirty years before The Scottish and Irish Lighthouse Boards were instituted, Trinity House had the right to erect seamarks but did not then have the power to collect dues for their maintenance. In 1757, James Ewing built the new trust's Wee (or Little) Cumbrae lighthouse 400-feet above sea level, on what was later named Lighthouse Hill, the cost, £140 5 shillings and 8 pence, considered low. The lighthouse tower a circular stone structure standing 28 feet high, with an external diameter of 18½ feet and its internal diameter 12½ feet, the lighthouse keepers accommodated in a cottage about thirty feet north of the tower. Coal, for the open fire in a grate at the top of the tower, came from pits near Cambuslang and was brought by horse and cart to Irvine and then sent by boat to the island, the coal burning so fiercely that the fire-grate had to be replaced after only one year and it then replaced regularly thereafter. The Act of Parliament which gave The 'Cumray' Lighthouse Trust the right to levy a charge of one penny sterling per tonne for every British ship on a foreign voyage (excluding His Majesty’s warships) and two pence sterling per tonne from any foreign vessels which passed the light, one half-penny per ton being charged on 'home traders' over 30 tons and up to two pence per ton on 'home traders' of between 15 and 30 tons, the light dues were to prove very profitable and, in March 1773, the dues from the light were used to pay for the quelling of a mob of sailors who had brought business to a halt in Greenock and Port Glasgow for ten days. The inherent limits of coal-fired lights, combined with the tower's position on top of a hill, meant that The Wee Cumbrae light was often obscured by cloud or fog and complaints from seamen led to a plan in 1790 to replace the light in the tower with another tower nearer the coast and, in 1793, Thomas Smith and Robert Stevenson, grand-father of Robert Louis Stevenson, completed the new lighthouse installation on the west of the island, The New Tower, 36 feet high and of unpainted stone, fitted with the new 'catoptrics' lighting system having 32 oil lamps and silvered glass reflectors and using mirrors, rather than lenses. In 1826 the illumination was upgraded to 15 argon lamps and the new lighthouse also equipped with a foghorn, slipway, jetty and boathouse. Increasing traffic into the Clyde ports and surpluses from the light dues allowed The Trustees to build The Cloch Lighthouse, in 1797 and then one at Toward Point, in 1812, the year when Henry Bell's steamboat, the "Comet", first appeared, both lighthouses lit with oil lamps and reflectors. Though The Clyde Lighthouses Trust was not involved in the developments of the new French 'dioptric' system, the developments largely done by French and English glassmakers and The Northern Lighthouse Board, these optics were installed at both Cloch and Cumbrae and the lights upgraded and fuelled by acetylene when they became available. 2

Built around the end of the 1880's, the Garroch Head Light, known to as. Rubh'an Eun, at the eastern point of Glencallum Bay on Bute, an automatic lighthouse on the opposite side of The Cumbrae Channel from The Wee Cumbrae Lighthouse, had a lens of 1330 mm focal distance, with prisms made of equiangular section, installed, the equiangular prisms designed by the Stevenson lighthouse engineers to give a greater brilliancy of light up and down the narrow channel and no other such unmanned light anywhere having a lens with such a focal length. In 1930 The Trustees installed a more powerful light at Toward Lighthouse, the Stevensons recommending a new departure, large parabolic, silver-backed, glass mirrors being installed with a focal length of 1000 mm, the new glass mirrors gave a brilliant light for less than a third of the cost of a lens and the mirrors at Toward giving a more powerful light than a dioptric lens of identical area and using an identical light source. Unlike the metal and glass mirrors of old, which were plated on the surface with silver, rhodium or aluminium, Toward's mirrors were easily kept clean and polished and were resistant to scratching. Whilst the prisms in a dioptric apparatus could not be adjusted after factory testing, the big advantage of the mirrors was the fact that they could be adjusted accurately at the time of installation, by taking observations from the sea.. The silver-backed glass mirror system was later taken up by the French and to some extent by The Northern Lighthouse Board and The Commissioners of Irish Lights, most stations having lenses which did not need to be replaced and the Toward's mirror system was later installed in e.g. the Tusker Rock, Girdleness, Rona and Langness, on The Isle of Man, lighthouses. The Clyde was the first estuary and river anywhere in The World to be lit by buoys and beacons, The Clyde Lighthouses Trust first establishing an offshore gas light at Port Glasgow Perch in 1861, the fixed light expensive to run and requiring frequent attendance and The Trust eventually solving the problem of lighting buoys in 1880 when they laid a buoy at Roseneath Patch, the very first in The World to use oil gas, which could be compressed without too much risk and, thanks to The Trustees' innovation, thousands of these similarly lit buoys soon in use worldwide and The Trustees again leading the way with a European first when they introduced American-designed electrically lit buoys on The Clyde in 1933. The Trustees too installed what is understood to be the first fog signal in Britain at Cumbrae Lighthouse in 1865, ten years before the first fog signal installed by The Northern Lighthouse Board, the compressed air generated by a coal-fired Ericsson caloric (hot air) engine, a fog signal later installed at Kempock Point and The Trustees trying out whistles of different pitches, one sounding after another, at The Cloch Lighthouse. The first automated steam-powered foghorn was invented by Robert Foulis (May 5, 1796 January 28, 1866) who, born in Glasgow, emigrated to Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1818, following the death of his first wife in childbirth, Foulis noted as inventor, civil engineer and artist. Settling in Saint John, Foulis was appointed deputy land surveyor in 1822 and, after surveying the upper Saint John River for the feasibility of steam shipping, he became involved with the buildings of several early steamboats and the first Saint John harbour ferry. Foulis founded the province's first iron foundry in 1825 and a school of arts in 1838 and later patented a gas light apparatus that was later used in lighthouses and, thanks to his daughter, 3

invented a steam-powered foghorn whose paternity was disputed between himself and the government of New Brunswick. Foulis is said to walking home on a foggy night and heard his daughter playing the piano in the distance and, noticing that the low notes were more audible than the higher notes, he then designed a device to produce a low-frequency sound, as well as a code system for use with it, Foulis believing his invention could reduce the number of ships colliding and grounding in foggy weather.. After repeated representations to The New Brunswick legislature, Foulis's fog signal was installed on Partridge Island in 1859 by a T. T. Vernon-Smith, Foulis himself involved in legal battles over his invention for the remainder of his life due to business ventures of varying success and his failure at patenting his foghorn, Foulis dying in poverty and Daboll and his 'Fog Trumpet' prospering. The United States Lighthouse Service, which was put on a proper footing in 1852, was in the forefront of developing sound fog signals that were regular and of a designated characteristic. The book 'A Short History of The Clyde Lighthouses Trust' relates the story of the Trust's decision to use a system invented by an American, the Daboll trumpet, he, having been paid £600 he came over from New York, installed his equipment at Cumbrae, where it was said to have worked very well, the American-published 'Harper's Weekly', of January 16, 1864 then noting that, on November 17, 1863, The Trinity House Commissioners, following successful trials of Daboll's 'Fog Trumpet' that day at Dungeness Lighthouse, had decided to purchase his equipment. A Daboll trumpet is an air trumpet foghorn which had been developed by an American, Celadon Leeds Daboll of New London, Connecticut. It was basically a small coal-fired hot air engine, which compressed air in a cylinder on top of which was a reed horn. The Daboll trumpet, consists of a steel reed vibrating within a horn, which uses the hot air engine to force cold air by means of an air pump into a boiler, from which it escapes into the horn through a valve, causing the vibrations of the reed, which are regulated by an automatic cam. The "Scientific American" magazine's supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, January 3, 1885 tells us that, "The Daboll trumpet was invented by Mr. C. L. Daboll of Connecticut, who was experimenting to meet the announced wants of The United States Lighthouse Board. "The largest consists of a huge trumpet seventeen feet long, with a throat three and one-half inches in diameter and a flaring mouth thirty-eight inches across. "In the trumpet is a resounding cavity and a tongue-like steel reed ten inches long, two and three-quarter inches wide, one inch thick at its fixed end and half that at its free end. "Air is condensed in a reservoir and driven through the trumpet by hot air or steam machinery at a pressure of from fifteen to twenty pounds and is capable of making a shriek which can be heard at a great distance for a certain number of seconds each minute, by about one-quarter of the power expended in the case of the whistle. "In all Daboll's experiments against and at right angles and at other angles to the wind, the trumpet stood first and the whistle came next in power.

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"In the trial of the relative power of various instruments made by General Duane in 1874, the twelve-inch whistle was reported as exceeding the first-class Daboll trumpet. Beaseley reports that the trumpet has done good work at various British stations, making itself heard from five to ten miles. "The engineer in charge of the lighthouses of Canada says, "The expense for repairs and the frequent stoppages to make these repairs during the four years they continued in use, made the trumpets expensive and unreliable. "The frequent stoppages during foggy weather made them sources of danger instead of aids to navigation. The sound of these trumpets has deteriorated during the last year or so". "General Duane, reporting as to his experiments in 1881, says, "The Daboll trumpet, operated by a caloric engine, should only be employed in exceptional cases, such as at stations where no water can be procured and where from the proximity of other signals it may be necessary to vary the nature of the sound". "Thus it would seem that the Daboll trumpet is an exceptionally fine instrument, producing a sound of great penetration and of sufficient power for ordinary practical use, but that to be kept going it requires skillful management and constant care". The Cumbrae fog signal was upgraded in 1922 with the then most powerful diaphone in the country, the channel there not much more than a mile wide and, with the general speed of passing vessels of the day, it having a very short interval between the groups of blasts, in the book 'A Short History of The Clyde Lighthouses Trust', the (1956) Cumbrae foghorn is described as, 'Diaphone foghorn operated by compressed air, furnished by engines of 60 hp, giving a signal of three 1½ second blasts and two 1½ second blasts alternately every 35 secs'. Again it was a first for Britain, trials of the diaphone in Ireland not adopted and the success of the Cumbrae installation leading quickly to other diaphone installations around Britain and Europe, the principle of the diaphone essentially a British invention, for church organs. The diaphone horn was based directly on the organ stop of the same name invented by Robert Hope-Jones, creator of the Wurlitzer organ and too of the 'Tibia Clausa', the staple of the cinema organ sound. Hope-Jones' design, based on the vibrations in air created by a slotted piston moving within a correspondingly slotted cylinder, was adapted and patented by Professor John Pell Northey of Toronto University, who added a secondary compressed air supply to the piston to power it on both forward and reverse strokes and create an even more powerful sound, the entire horn apparatus was driven by a compressor. To manufacture the new equipment, Northey set up The Diaphone Signal Co. at Toronto in 1903. It manufactured a range of diaphone models, the large "Type F", which created a tone of about 250 Hertz, found worldwide use as a fog signal, especially in lighthouses. The mechanism of the diaphone created a noticeable low-frequency "grunt" at the end of each note produced, caused by the speed of the piston reducing as the air supply was cut. As this low-frequency sound could carry further, Northey's son Rodney redesigned the "Type F" model to sustain the second low tone, creating the familiar two-tone fog signal which was commonly used in light houses and light vessels in the United States and Canada, installations in Europe generally using singletone diaphones

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The European manufacturing rights were obtained by Chance Brothers of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, already a major supplier of 'fresnel lenses' and other equipment to lighthouse authorities. New, slow running, oil engines, started by heating with acetylene, rather than the more usual blow lamp method, were installed for the fog signals, the engines taking quite a long time to start up but also matched with numerous large compressed air receivers to allow instant start up of the fog signals. Later, Toward was given a reed-type fog signal, with Kelvin diesel engines to drive the compressors and the Cloch's original siren-type fog signal was replaced with a diaphone, the residents of Dunoon little amused ! Uniquely, the Cloch's compressors were later to be driven by small gas turbines and the Cumbrae's compressors driven by large Rolls Royce diesel engines, all very innovative. In 1914, forerunners in the field, The Clyde Lighthouses Trust introduced radio control, the application of radio at that time confined to Morse code telegraphy and The Trust using radio for the first time to perform mechanical functions, operating valves from a distance by radio impulses and placing a new, unmanned, fog signal on a pile structure at Roseneath Patch, Marconi engineers building the necessary radio equipment to The Trust's own engineers' design and the signal operated from Greenock, over a mile away, The Northern Lighthouse Board and the French and United States Lighthouse Services followed in the steps of the little Clyde Lighthouse Service in the use of this new technology. The distortion of sound, particularly in fog, makes it very difficult for a mariner to judge direction from a fog signal and ships having difficulty obtaining sufficient accuracy from cross bearings from the four DF radio beacons then operated by The Northern Lighthouse Board, three of the four NLB beacons far away and all having to send signals across land to be picked up in the entrance to The Clyde, the speed and number of vessels in the estuary making it too risky to rely on these cross bearings, not least as the bearings from any two DF stations could not be taken at the same time, The Clyde Lighthouses Trust were also first to introduce 'talking beacons', the Cumbrae's fog signals synchronised with radio signals, to allow safer passage through the narrow Cumbrae Channel, the problem resolved by 1929, an automatic radio broadcast gave the name of the fog station and a signal, synchronised with the blasts of the fog signal, then enabled the listener to count of the distance between his position and that of the fog station. The fog signals synchronised with the radio signals, one simply notes the second hand time when one hears the radio signal and then again when one hears the actual fog signal, the time difference is noted and the distance calculated on the basis of sound travelling through the air at the rate of one nautical mile in 5.5 seconds and thus, simply divide the time distance by 5.5 for the 'distance off' in nautical miles, or by 5.0 for the 'distance off' in statute (land) miles. This new invention was quickly adopted by The United States Lighthouse Service and installed at over 100 stations, the Americans preferring to use telegraphy rather than telephony and the 'talking' unique to The Clyde beacons, the last 'talking' beacon installed at The Cloch Lighthouse in 1939 and, The British Royal Society of Arts, with representatives of Trinity House and Admiralty amongst the judges, deciding that the Stevenson 'Talking Beacon' was the most valuable navigation invention of its time, the beacons remaining in service until automation of both the Cumbrae and Cloch lighthouses' equipment.

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On January 1, 1966, the interests of The Clyde Lighthouses Trust, Clyde Navigation Trust, their old boundary a line across The Clyde from Newark Castle to the mouth of the Cardross Burn and Greenock Harbour Trust were merged under the banner of the newly created Clyde Port Authority, a self-governing public trust port operating under its own Acts of Parliament, its board including non-executive members appointed by The Secretary of State for Transport, the new body having jurisdiction over an area of some 450 square miles of water, from Glasgow's Albert Bridge in Glasgow to a line drawn some fifty miles away, between Corrygills Point on the Isle of Arran and Gailes on the Ayrshire Coast, the authority having responsibility for the main navigable channel, lighting, buoys and the provision of harbour facilities at Glasgow, Greenock, Ardrossan, which came into the new body's control in 1968 and Hunterston's Ore and Coal Terminal, which opened in 1979, the Cumbrae, Toward and Cloch lighthouses soon being automated and The Clyde Port Authority being privatised in 1992, it later acquired by its management and employees and becoming known as 'Clydeport', it in turn becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Peel Holdings plc in January 2003. Today only Toward's lighthouse, once regarded as the least important of the three manned stations, has a light in the original lantern albeit from a sealed beam array, the Cloch lighthouse has only a small 'Tideland' type flasher on its tower balcony, its tower and adjacent houses protected by The National Trust for Scotland - The 1792 tower and keepers' houses at Cumbrae, now unused, have been sold into private ownership and the navigation light is now placed where the old fog horns were situated.

The Clyde Lighthouses Trust's beloved the twin-screw "Torch" which serviced the the buoys and lighthouses of The Clyde, north of The Wee Cumbrae and The Garroch Head and which, once a year, on her 'Annual Inspection of Lights' cruise, called at Wemyss Bay to pick up the VIP's, including the then Clyde Trust's secretary Alex Stevens, who stayed in Skelmorlie. Built by The Ailsa Shipbuilding Company's Ayr Shipyard as Yard No 387 and registered in Glasgow, the 329 gross, 117 net ton, 137' x 27' x 10' draught, "Torch" was launched on Friday, May 16, 1924 and given twin steam compound engines - Transferred to The Clyde Port Authority on January 1, 1966, the "Torch" was eventually sold for scrapping in March 1978 and scrapped at Dalmuir in early 1980, one of her engines carefully removed for preservation purposes and given to The Scottish Maritime Museum http://www.scottishmaritimemuseum.org/

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The 'No 1' pilot cutter "Cumbrae", with her two masts and tall yellow funnel and more like a steam yacht of days gone by, was a familiar sight in The Cumbrae Channel, was launched at George Brown & Company Greenock's yard on Thursday, October 15, 1936 as Yard No. 199, her Official Number 164103. Of 101 gross register tons and 36 net registered tons, she was 90' 2" in length, 19' 9" beam and had a draught of 8½ feet. Her single screw, powered originally by a British Polar 2SA 5 cylinder, 325 bhp diesel engine, giving her a speed of 10½ knots, was replaced with a 400 bhp British Polar M 5 cylinder 2SA in 1957, her speed unchanged. Owned by The Clyde Pilotage Trust, the "Cumbrae" was sold off in 1974 to Marine Oil Industry Response Ltd., managed by Raymond Hart in London, who converted her to 'cargo use' and renamed her "Orrin", then sold on the following year, in 1975, to Metal Recoveries (Newhaven) Ltd., her status today unrecorded.

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