One of Trinity House Vessel (‘THV’) Galatea’s key tasks is maintaining lightships. This (picture) is the Sevenstones Lightship, off the Isles of Scilly. Once manned, but now fully automated, like Trinity House’s remarkable lighthouse network, the Sevenstones Lightship rides the waves day in and day out; warning mariners off one of the most dangerous landfalls – against stiff competition – in the British Isles. Automated maybe, but as always there’s no substitute for hands-on checking; the illimitable power of the oceans can do strange things and great damage to any ship, and particularly to one that must sit at anchor and take whatever storms Old Father Neptune may summon. And with the Scilly Isles the UK point of arrival for the giant energies the Atlantic has gathered across its 106,460,000 square kilometres, Sevenstones has to be tough to tough it out…
A SHIP FOR SAFETY
03 September 2018
Share this
About Rob
Rob is a TV producer, reporter and camera operator with 30 years of experience at the BBC, Channel 4 and ITN, in news, factual and documentary production. He is a four-time award winner, whose awards include a coveted Royal Television Society award for his work on Channel 4 News. His association with the Maritime Foundation goes back to 1995 when he won the first Desmond Wettern Maritime Media Award for a series of reports that led to a major documentary on the loss of the bulk carrier Derbyshire.