Red Sea Island Lighthouses (excluding Perim) in WW1
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In 1903 three lighthouses were established in the southern part of the Red Sea to assist navigation. They were all built by the French under a concession granted by the Ottoman Empire. In early December 1914 (not during 1915 as stated by some writers) all three lighthouses were taken over by the British to ensure that these lights remained operational in a war zone the waters of which were under the total control of the Royal Navy. Initially the replenishment and routine relief of these guards was the responsibility of the detachment commander at Perim, using the guardship there for the purpose. It was soon appreciated that it was unacceptable for a guardship to be so far away from the point it was guarding; so early 1915 the lighthouses themselves and the guards became the responsibility of the Aden Port Trust.
In December the guards had been taken from Aden in the Empress of Russia, the first of the three armed merchant cruisers to arrive at Aden. Each guard consisted of a junior NCO and six men, to be posted by an officer from their regiment who made the round trip.
The three lighthouses were (from South to North) at Abu Ail, Centre Peak and Jebel Teir, the last two having modern names, which are those on the map with this article. Before depositing the Indian guards, working parties spent a day at each site, the guards themselves being landed on 11 and 12 December.
Early in the proceedings a French cruiser had appeared and had transferred guards for the southern two lighthouses to the Empress of Russia. These had been landed on the 9th, but it is assumed these were only temporary as no mention of them has been found thereafter.
The exact locations of the lighthouses have been taken from a marine chart of 1912. Abu Ail (see photograph, taken in 2006,) is off the northeast corner of Jazirat Zugar Island, on a small outcrop that does not show up on the writer’s edition of Google Earth.
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Centre Peak is the small island just southwest of Jaza ir al Zubayr, and is on quite a high volcanic outcrop (over 340 ft above sea level), which allows a lighthouse there to be spotted 30 miles away. Jebel Teir (nowadays Jabal At Tayr) is an isolated volcanic peak northwest of Kamaran, which also allowed a lighthouse to be seen from 30 miles. Ships going up the red Sea from Aden would always pass to starboard of Abu Ail due to the presence of many isolated shoals and rocks to the west of the Hanish Islands. Once past Abu Ail ships would set a course to pass to port of Centre Peak and Jebel Teil.
Abu Ail lighthouse in 2006
The task of resupplying the guards during WW1 was quite onerous; one can get some idea of this from the article ‘2 months in the life of an Empress’, which is a diary of one of the half dozen or so ships operating in the southern Red Sea during the months of June and July 1915. Fortunately this was also their patrol area, on the lookout for blockade-runners.
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After the end of WW1 Turkey lost all her overseas possessions, with the Red Sea Islands not being allocated to any particular country. The history of the lighthouses post-1923 will be covered in another article in due course.