The future is bright

A beacon for sustainability and the safe movement of trade. That’s the Trinity House ethos in the words of its director of operations, Commodore Rob Dorey, former president of the IMarEST.

Six Trinity House beacons were beaming brightly over the Platinum Jubilee weekend, marking the first time a British monarch celebrates 70 years of service, which Commodore Rob Dorey says is only “fitting for an organisation established by Royal Charter more than 500 years ago.” Rob enjoys seeing these connections between the past and the present.

Change is the one constant

“The first lighthouse we built was back in 1609,” says Rob. That was a pair of beacons lit by tallow candles but today’s structure at Lowestoft is a much later construction from 1874. It’s a similar story, he continues, at Plymouth’s Eddystone Rock where the fourth lighthouse was built by the site of previous structures in 1882. Given the age of many of the lighthouse structures, Trinity House has worked with the University of Plymouth to examine the vulnerabilities, which revealed over-engineering to a factor of 10. “They’re incredibly well-made and designed, with interlocking blocks, like a jigsaw puzzle, so when they are hit by a big wave, the whole lighthouse can shift a fraction and absorb some of the energy,” says Rob. “And some energy is dissipated by the rocks on which the lighthouse is built, combined with the tree-trunk shape. The structure is difficult to beat.”

By way of contrast, Rob draws attention to the decommissioning of the Royal Sovereign lighthouse that was towed out to sea in 1971 from the beach at Newhaven where it was built, using the latest steel-reinforced concrete structures. “It was cleverly done, but it’s not a structure that’s easy to repair, so it hasn’t outlasted the Victorians.” says Rob. It will be replaced by a buoy, combined with higher-performing adjacent lights, which is more proportionate to the risks of today. The deep draft traffic has moved further offshore.

When coerced, Rob admits to having two favourite lighthouses. The first sits in the village of Southwold, and the heady combination of the lighthouse, the colourful houses and the nearby pub, Dorey confesses, clinches the deal. The other is Portland Bill. “If a kid were to draw a lighthouse, they’d probably draw something like Portland,” says Rob. “It’s a marvellously remote tall building on low-lying land that juts out into the sea, marking a very hazardous area for shipping close inshore, while also providing a long-range light for those crossing Lyme Bay or in transit further offshore.” Portland dates back to 1906, and the visitor centre not only explains the role of shipping today but also exhibits the old optic, an item of engineering, artistic and technological beauty, without the bath of hazardous mercury upon which it floated.

Portland Bill Lighthouse

Greener credentials

From the seventeenth century's baskets of burning wood, to whale oil, acetylene gas, and finally, electricity, Rob skips forwards to today and the 70 watt LED light that only consumes power when it flashes. “LED allows solar to be our power of choice, while still charging batteries that last a number of days or even weeks, for offshore stations,” says Rob. “And we can now duplicate everything so, if one light or power supply fails, the service is unaffected and the mariner doesn’t notice.” A number of Trinity House land stations are still powered by mains, but Rob says they will all move to solar, with offshore stations transitioning also. “We have experimented with tidal energy, but the equipment needs to be serviced often, because of marine growth. We would normally only visit a lighthouse twice a year for maintenance and increased servicing would mean a greater use of ships or helicopters for access, which would increase our carbon footprint.” With wind, they’ve had mixed success as waves have taken out the wind turbines.

Once gas-powered, today all buoys are LED and solar powered. The solar panels charge the battery and the battery powers the light. “We have to set them up to generate sufficient power through the winter months, when the lights are on longer, and the ability to recharge is reduced." Some will have telemetry or communications like a Racon and AIS that use energy but battery technology and solar power now generate sufficient power. For many years the Met Office weather equipment was deployed within Trinity House lightvessels but technological advances mean the team was recently able to change the Channel Lightvessel for a buoy that still delivers all the Met data.

Well-connected

The one element that hasn’t changed in its 500-year history is its raison d’être. And Rob sees new ways of increasing safety at sea, suggesting that buoys might facilitate data networks such as VDES or 5G which expand networks so a ship’s communications could hop from buoy to buoy. And sea-kayakers and windsurfers might also benefit. He’s also conscious of the guy in his fishing boat who still relies on physical aids, and he says all seafarers should use physical aids more to verify their position. “Satellite navigation signals are very corruptible and susceptible to interference. Having a fallback of traditional techniques, such as looking out the window, provides an essential cross-check, and if all else fails, those skills coupled with physical aids to navigation will still tell you where you are and keep you safe,” says Rob. He calls on the autonomous world to focus effort on understanding what a fallback navigation system might be, so uncrewed vessels can navigate safely, perhaps through the use of optics and artificial intelligence to visually locate physical aids.

Rob is also trustee to the Trinity House Maritime Charity and acknowledges the resilience shown by the one hundred or so cadets in the training programme through the COVID-19 period, when some sea-placement schedules had to be adapted. Rob was particularly delighted with the recent placement of four cadets on a four-month training deployment on the polar research vessel RSS Sir David Attenborough under the command of former Trinity House Merchant Navy Scholarship Scheme cadet Captain Will Whatley. Returning to the UK from Antarctica, a warm welcome is expected for the cadets and captain, with an extra-bright twinkle from Trinity House’s buoys, lightvessels and lighthouses.

Commodore Rob Dorey MA FIMarEST is Trinity House director of operations and former president of the IMarEST 

Trinity House is one of the three General Lighthouse Authorities for the UK and Ireland. Responsible for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar, it provides aids to navigation from its operational bases at Harwich, Swansea and St Just, with responsibility for 66 lighthouses, 450 buoys and seven lightvessels in its jurisdiction, as well as a statutory duty to inspect 11,000 local aids to navigation.