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Came the time to go to the Nab, the Dockyard Mateys were in residence, and I went aboard as Ken Monk was coming ashore, recalled retired lighthouse keeper Harold Taylor.
It was August 1969 and I had as crew John Watts and Dermot Cronin, an Irishman from Dublin. He was an awkward cus, and could not be told anything. He would not even be accommodating. He did things his way and that is how he was going to do it. In some respects I think he was the cause of defects that later hit the hot water system.
The first annoying habit I detected was probably the first day aboard. If he was cook, after dinner he took all the oven shelves out to the very large sink, ran all the hot water from the cylinder into the sink, overflowing it to let them soak in the water. He'd then leave them to cool sufficiently for him to be able to bear the heat on his hands.
At the same time he let the Range out. He only used the stove 'full ahead' and the place had got too hot for him. This had the result that anyone wanting a wash or to use hot water was not able to. It also had the effect on the Cylinder, which was too close to the heat source, being less than two feet away.
There was therefore considerable strain put on the joints due to expansion and contraction, for which we were to suffer later. The cold water tank was on the roof above and likely to freeze in winter. Trinity spent considerably more on trying to repair this tank than if they had replaced it.
His other habit was when leaving the kitchen when ever he was on watch and others were in bed. There is a list at the Nab because the tower is 16 inches out of upright. This list coincided with the direction the kitchen door shut.
When he went through the door he just let it go and it would bang shut sending vibrations throughout the tower. There was one bedroom, mine, next door to this door, and he was not prepared to change his habit no matter how much it inconvenienced anyone else. It might have taken him longer to get through the door if he stopped to shut it.
I do not think we ever cured him but we did fight against him with some results. He was a mad keen fisherman and spent many hours at it, as did I, whereas John was not inclined at all.
During this first turn aboard, the dockyard wished to try out a new watering vessel, and because of the height to which they would have to pump water for such as the Aircraft Carriers, we were a good test bed for them so they frequently came out to top up our tanks although the dockies were not working.
It was during this period that they came out from Trinity and fitted the V.H.F. telephone link. McCarthy was aboard the time I caught my cod, I mis-told earlier.
Another time here I caught I highly coloured fish. At the time we were catching Black Bream. It in fact looked to all intents and purposes like that breed except for the colour. At the time, the dockies were aboard and there were some knowledgeable fishermen among them who did not recognise the fish.
It so happened they were going ashore for the week-end at the time I made my catch. When they returned, they came back with the knowledge that this was a Blako Bream, how rare it was I do not know? but by then it had been eaten and confirmation could not be made. It weighed 3lbs 6oz. Was it a record?
Whenever I describe the fish these days, everyone immediately says Cuckoo Wrasse. I have caught these fish and I know it was not. That year the dockies made a second visit, because it had been decided to re-step the mast and renew all the signal halliards. While this was going on the NATO Fleet was scheduled to arrive, which they duly did on a Friday 9th September.
One vessel was missing and due to arrive the following day. It was the American Aircraft Carrier, Newport News. When it arrived it was rather poor visibility, but this dirty looking hulk slid by and duly entered Spithead.
A short while later a small grey craft was hanging about near the Outer Nab Buoy, and it looked in some ways similar to a Portuguese Corvette that had arrived two days earlier which had also hung about the same spot.
On that occasion I had used the telephone to contact the Pilots to tell them a ship was awaiting a Pilot. I did the same this day, asking if they were expecting a vessel. They replied and asked what funnel markings there were, obviously not expecting anything. I told them I thought it had gold stars on a red band. When I went to look through the powerful telescope supplied by the dockyard; more for the amusement of the dockies, than our use.
I saw the there were two people with a ladder and leaning from the bridge hastily draping the funnel with a cloth which depicted the Ace of Spades. When I reported this, all hell broke loose. I had calls from Havant C.G and others wanting more description of the vessel. They were blocking each others channel with their calls.
At the same time the vessel in question put about and headed off to the south east, but this time the opposite side of the funnel was now disguised and one could clearly see that in the red band was displayed the golden Hammer & Sickle.
The vessel had obviously shadowed the fleet into port. Having been morning watch I went to bed that afternoon, but I was rudely awoken with the arrival of the Police Launch Ashburton. a Sergeant wished to take a statement from me regarding this ship, and stated that there was a naval despatch rider waiting at the quayside to rush the report to Whitehall.
I made this report with the assistance of the dockyard riggers who were still aboard. They were also the same people who were responsible for erecting specialised aerials on warships, so could confirm that the vessel was sophisticatedly equipped with high tech. monitoring type aerials. This report was taken ashore and at 9 p.m. that night I received a telephone call from the Admiralty, thanking me and acknowledging the report.
Sunday the 11th apparently the newspapers were full of the report of Russian spy vessels entering Spithead and being detected. Unfortunately I do not have a copy. Having taken down the hieroglyphic of the name of the vessel, I think the translation came out as Orchard Park.
On the 12th, Monday morning, a submarine come out from Portsmouth and made radio contact with us, and after a lot of fiddling about finding frequencies that we could communicate with each other on this T class sub asked for full details and description. I told them that it was one of the type of vessels that each day took up observation position off Bonchurch cliffs, changing over at 11 a.m. each morning with a different vessel in outline.
They chose to adopt the attitude that they did not know this, but perhaps it was for special reasons.
During these early days with the V.H.F. telephone Trinity carried out an exercise which possibly confirmed their feasibility to control all lighthouses by radio communication from one depot. That being Harwich. Through the telephone link up Harwich talked through the radio and land line link with us on the Nab via the Smalls lighthouse in the Irish Sea.
It was not a 100% success but enough to give them encouragement. Since then of course satellite communication has gone ahead leaps and bounds.
I recall one turn off there with Ken, the hot water tank, which was situated too close to the heat source started to leak, or perhaps it had started to leak before I went on station. This was reported and the crazy decision was to send a Coppersmith out to solder it. This as I have said was a crazy notion, Peter Carrot the young man who came, spent a long time soldering the seams, but no sooner had he left the station then it started to leak all over again, and worse. This was of course because solder will not stand the expansion and contraction that brazing would cope with. I recall that it was nearing Xmas, and it was extremely cold that year.
Peter had been with us once before, I had been in charge, when the battery charging rheostat failed to operate, and on inspection I found that a brass shoe that should slide across the resistance studs had become detached. It should have been held in place by a braided wire that was brazed to it. I reported these facts, but what did they do? send Peter to solder it in position. Of course it did not hold and was soon malfunctioning again. This time however the dockies were in residence and I got them to do the brazing job that was required.
Soon after the previous solder job was done on the tank, the Christmas relief was upon us. Ken was back on station and he brought with him Jack Hodgkinson, who to my surprise was an S.A.K. I had known Jack before, because he had come to Bardsey as an S.A.K . It seems that through some dissatisfaction he had left the job and had now rejoined. He was now a very different character, very embittered with everyone and everything.
The whole period set out as disaster period. We were anticipating a spare T.V. which did not work on arrival, but the depot was good enough to get another replacement delivered by pilot boat. This had been set up for voltage etc. for a light vessel, and we had to set about changing tappings on resistances and aerial to make it right for us.
The weather turned very bitter, and both Ken and I could not understand why Jack was sleeping with his door open. After about a week we asked him if he liked all this fresh air, although we had noticed that he hung a blanket over the doorway which did not fill the space. His reply to our questioning was blunt and to the fact, that if he had been able shut the fucking thing he would.
This will take some explaining. The door to his room led off the interior space, and just outside of it was a hand winch, which I understand was an ammunition winch from the magazine, now non-existent. There was a bar of metal on this contraption, that when moved, conveniently held the door open against the lean of the tower that would have closed it. We therefore showed him how to close his door.
All this time we had the continuing leak from the tank, causing us to empty the buckets quite frequently, until on Xmas Eve Ken and I decided that we would do the job ourselves so that we could have a decent fire on Christmas day to cook our dinner.
We had been managing with as low a fire as possible to boil a kettle and cook a dinner. Sods law set in and we had a most severe frost, the water supply on the roof froze, water in and to the sink froze and we were in the grip of one of the worst winters I experiencedon a lighthouse. There was no warmth at all the whole building being no more than a tin can.
Our comfort was only made better by donning all the warm clothing we had. Not added to by Black Jack, as he was nick named. There was quite a good programme on T.V. but for some reason Jack would not watch B.B.C. television, so every time such a station was on he would turn his chair round and sit with his back to the screen.
I do not remember what the date was, but there was an incident while I was on the tower with Cronin and I believe a Super. I was awoken one night with a terrific racket going on. It was the radio turned up full blast and the sound so distorted that it was unreadable.
I left my room to see what the noise was all about, and found the radio room empty. I turned the volume back so one could gather what was going on. With that, Dermot came back into the quarters saying he had been listening to the set outside. That there was a distress on.
It transpired that he had been listening in on the radio and heard that a tanker, the Pacific Glory had collided with a large Chinese bulk carrier down somewhere off the western end of the I.of W. The tanker was on fire. It was not visible from where we were, but he was outside looking for it and trying to keep up with events.
The brainlessness of some people. Perhaps that is from whence the Irish get their reputation. Tugs of course went out and fire tenders, but it was many hours and daylight before they came into view. The ship was well ablaze. They were towing it and we could gauge their route, I remarked that as far as I could see they would be fouling a sand bank if they carried on their present route.
That must have been their intention, because as near as I could gauge that is where they stopped, for the ship to carry on burning, without sinking whilst the fight against the fire was continued.
It was an awesome sight, the whole of the astern section glowing red hot, at the same time through the various apertures you could see the golden coloured flames leaping up within. It made me feel quite sick . There were a host of busy craft around, pumping water and filming, plus aircraft overhead also filming, carrying reporters and observers.
In fact one of my acquaintances got a special T.V award for his coverage of the incident. He was Clive Roberts, who had been photographer for our local paper, but had entered the world of T.V camera man.
The worst for us was the stink, what the winds were at the time I do not remember, but she was down wind of the recognised prevailing. Also the tide flow took all the stinking water past us at each high water circulated it around, and took it all back again on the ebb.
We had these foul eye smarting fumes about us for several days, not a very healthy position to be in, although the vessel was perhaps four miles from us. Added to these problems, we also had all the dead fish that had been killed by the spilt oil which helped made the environment very noisome.
Another happening during my stay at the Nab was the occasion when NASA Mission Control made a booboo. During one night I was out observing the weather when high in the heavens I saw this large mass, which could not have been a cloud for the sky was cloudless. It was so significant that I recorded it.
Later it was revealed that an experiment had gone wrong and caused world consternation and criticism. Apparently and enormous gas filled bag containing Iodised needles had been sent into the stratosphere, with the intention to burst it at a given altitude, but the bag had burst early.
Another day following my departure ashore the tower was struck by a passing Norwegian tanker that failed to make proper allowances for the tide, and did not pass quite as it intended, causing quite considerable damage, especially to the access steps.
This gave the Admiralty excuse to do a full overhaul job of the dockies quarters and made them superb. Attempts to persuade Trinity to do a similar job for us were to no avail, although there had been intentions before I had gone back for my second period on this station to do some reconstruction.
All the good intentions came to nought, although, when de-manning took place I believe some of these were introduced. But then Trinity improved the living accommodation on all the station once they were de-manned. I suppose there is a logic there somewhere, but I fail to see it.
What was destined to happen had their plans been carried out was for the Engine room to be dropped down to the next floor, about twenty foot below, and the whole of the top floor taken over as accommodation and working area. Whilst I was there this second time the fuel tanks were in fact taken down and re-erected in '45'.
This created ease for refuelling by our ship. They re-directed the water filling pipes as well. I probably should be more correct and say they installed new fuel tanks with pumps to pump the fuel to the engine room.
They also installed new and larger water tanks but they put these up in the same position, under the accommodation floor. To do this they removed some plates off the tower side and left them in a temporary position, as it would be through these that they would bring in the new engine room equipment. Unfortunately Trinity did not tell the Admiralty they had decide not to improve the station. The dockies arrived with all the means to install new concrete floors
Yet another new thing arrived, but not for us. The new Royal Sovereign Light had been put in position, and the only access from the sea was to be by means of a basket hauled up from one of the tenders launches. I was joining the Nab one relief when all this gear was going out. The skipper of the ship had the bright idea to use these baskets to land gear at the Nab, a disaster.
He had already decided on recent reliefs to stop the parcel handling and used a cargo net. This had proved un-satisfactory as they had left the strops too long so we could not get the net on to the landing area,. We had to pull out each item one at a time whilst being in a precarious position near the edge of the staging where we had had to remove the protective rails.
A similar thing happened with the baskets except it was easier to remove the gear from the open basket top. Those in command are never prepared to learn from those with experience.
In the re-organising of the Dockies quarters, it had removed them entirely from the upper floor, which gave us their space to move around in especially as they had also removed their huge black coal fire range. I am told that this is now on H.M.S. Warrior.
Their quarters were now all electric, which we supplied. I don't exactly remember how it effected us but once they had gone we now used their small domestic hot water stove, whether it had been coupled to ours in some way, so that in the summer we could reduce the use of the Rayburn I am not certain.
The Nab was a pig to live in, like living in a tin can. Hot in the summer and freezing in the winter as all we had against the elements was the thin sheet of metal. At the same time all the hawse holes that had been used in the towing operation back in 1929 were still open and the wind entered the building from every quarter. During this 're-skinning' operation these holes were being sealed up, but they had by no means reached their conclusion.
Continued in part 5
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