Qualla: Longships Lighthouse

Longships Lighthouse: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom Corser, CC BY-SA 3.0. In January 1901, a search party reached the Longships Lighthouse after several weeks of storms had prevented anyone from relieving the keepers, and a national newspaper had begun worrying aloud about whether the men out there had run out of food. They had not. The stores were full. The only thing the keepers were short of was tobacco, and they had been improvising since Christmas with whatever happened to come out of the kitchen: coffee grounds, hops from the brewing supplies, and dried tea leaves. They smoked the tea. The Longships Lighthouse, on a wave-battered pinnacle of granite a mile and a quarter off Land's End, has been demanding that kind of patience from its keepers since 1795. Today there are no keepers at all. The lamp is solar-powered and runs itself.

Read more: Longships Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Tom Corser | CC BY-SA 3.0

Longships Lighthouse: A Tower on a Pinnacle

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Longships are a small chain of rocky islets just over a nautical mile west of Land's End, regularly breaking the surface of one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the British Isles. The highest of them, Carn Bras, rises only 12 metres above high water level, which ...

Read more: Longships Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Longships Lighthouse: Smith Goes to Prison

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Champion, CC BY-SA 2.0. Smith engaged Samuel Wyatt, newly appointed Surveyor of Trinity House, as his architect. Work on Carn Bras began in 1793. The tower, built of Cornish granite, was eventually completed in 1795: only 38 feet high, but raised on its rock pinnacle so that the lantern stood 24 metres ...

Read more: Longships Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Jim Champion | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longships Lighthouse: The Replacement Tower

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rod Allday, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first tower was too low. Even at 24 metres above sea level, exceptional Atlantic seas were known to wash up the rock and obscure the lantern itself, defeating the whole purpose. In 1869 Trinity House began building a replacement to the designs of William Douglass, using equip...

Read more: Longships Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Rod Allday | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longships Lighthouse: Keepers and the Empty Tower

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit margaret ellis, CC BY-SA 2.0. Through almost two centuries the lighthouse was run by rotating teams of keepers, usually two on at a time, a month on station and a month ashore. They lived inside the tower, hauled their supplies up the rock face, watched the lamp through the long winter nights and signalled me...

Read more: Longships Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: margaret ellis | CC BY-SA 2.0

Longships Lighthouse: The Day the Horn Would Not Stop

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Downer, CC BY-SA 2.0. In March 2025 the Longships Lighthouse made the national news for a more peculiar reason. Residents and visitors at Land's End and Sennen Cove began to notice that the fog horn was sounding continuously, all day and all night, in clear weather and rough. The complaints reached th...

Read more: Longships Lighthouse on Qualla

Image: Chris Downer | CC BY-SA 2.0