LIGHTHOUSE | perim

PERIM LIGHTHOUSE

Although it had been a strategic decision in 1857 to re-occupy Perim to prevent the French from taking it, the ostensible reason was to build a much-needed lighthouse on the island. There were conflicting views as to where the lighthouse should be built and to what extent it and the harbour should be defended. It was to be nearly three years after the reoccupation before work started on the lighthouse and four years and four months before the light was first lit.

The first to outline the possible sites was Lieutenant Lamb, the naval officer sent to do a reconnaissance by the Resident in Aden, Brigadier General Coghlan, prior to the re-occupation in January 1857.

He reported that from a navigational point of view a lighthouse on the highest point would be best – it could seen at a great distance and by ships passing either side of the island, as well as by ships entering the harbour at night. On the other hand a lighthouse on Obstruction Point (the northeast corner of the island) would be much the best site if it was contemplated building a fortified base to the lighthouse. Playfair (the 1st Assistant) and Greig (the Engineer officer sent to build the lighthouse) assumed that a fort would be included and interpreted Lamb’s report as having selected the bluff on Obstruction Point as the best site. The bluff was some 52 ft above sea level, whilst the high ground was in excess of 200 ft. (It was initially reported, incorrectly, as being 245 ft – but soon changed to 214 ft, only about seven feet higher than the next highest point some 800 yards to the north – the site that was eventually chosen.)

Playfair commented that from a navigational point of view it would assist mariners to have a lighthouse on a cliff that overlooked deep water and which could therefore be used as a direct aid to navigation. He also thought that the highest point should not remain unoccupied as from there a battery would dominate the lighthouse, barracks and harbour. It would also be a good lookout against slave traders. With hindsight the point about a light on the bluff being a direct aid to navigation was very valid. All the major shipwrecks of steamers once the lighthouse was functioning were to be onto the rocks at the eastern end of the island, and all at night, through captains overestimating the distance to danger by assuming that they had spotted the light at or near its maximum range.

Brigadier General Coghlan was not convinced that Obstruction Point was the best site and he sounded out various naval officers. The first was the captain of the Station Ship, back from Zanzibar, who went to Perim to make his assessment. Greig sent the following report of the visit:

Captain Frishard RN, however, was of a totally different opinion; when he arrived at Perim to fix, as I understand, the position of the light house he selected the second highest point on the island; I told him that the bluff and the highest point had been advocated, but he answered ‘no, this is the place’. Captain Frishard did not favour me with a copy of his reasons for his choice.

The siting of a lighthouse was obviously of no concern to a landlubber, and a junior officer at that! Greig soon realised that Frishard had a point: due to it being too far South a lighthouse on the highest point would not be visible to ships passing through the Small Strait for a critical part of their passage.

On receiving a revised report from Greig, Major General Waddington [Chief Engineer in Bombay] commented that as far as he was concerned Greig had seemed to have established the superiority of the second highest point on the island as the best location for a lighthouse ‘combined with a fort’.

On 25 April 1857 Coghlan commented that it had not occurred to him before to give his view on the type of light as he had rather assumed that it would be a fixed and constant light. He thought it would be a mistake to install a revolving light as repair facilities on site would be non-existent; he therefore proposed to instruct the Executive Engineer to plan and estimate for a stationary light.

Aerial view taken 1929

This officer, Lieutenant Wilkins RE, then informed Coghlan that to be able to make a plan and produce an estimate of cost he needed additional information. He needed to know the distance from which it was desirable that the light should be seen, as the height of the lighthouse would depend on this distance.

He also needed to know the number of lighthouse keepers for whom accommodation had to be provided. At that stage it had been proposed to use the light that had been in a lighthouse on the Colabar coast; the idea in India was that the light would need to be modified to meet the requirements of the lighthouse. Wilkins made the sensible suggestion that perhaps it would be better to adapt the lighthouse to the machinery of the light in its present state and therefore to send the light to Aden as it was. Or in other words Wilkins would design a lighthouse to take the old Colabar light.

Another to give his views, without the benefit of having seen the terrain, was the Hydrographer to the Admiralty, Captain Washington RN. He made three comments: in his opinion the light house should be on (or near to) the highest point; it should be a 1st Class revolving light; and it should be put up with the least possible delay. A revolving light was preferable as the bright flash would be visible two or three miles further away than a fixed light. Also having a revolving light would distinguish it from the fixed light at Aden 90 miles away.

To these suggestions Waddington on 1 September made two pertinent, and for a landlubber perhaps impertinent, comments: the difference between being able to see a light at 24 rather than 22 miles did not in this case seem to be very important; and it was also unimportant that it should be distinguishable from the Aden light as the one could not possibly be taken for the other. But he did agree about the need to get on with the job!

The new naval Commander-in-Chief on the India Station, Commodore Wellesly, had recently passed through the Small Strait. He agreed with the Hydrographer that the lighthouse should be on or near the highest point; he also thought a fixed light was better. He added yet another point of view: A lighthouse was considered so sacred by the whole world that he would not have installed a battery anywhere near it. His final point was that the lighthouse should be at least 25 ft high to be able to be seen at least 22 miles away.

Thus although by the end of 1857 the many ‘experts’ were in more or less unanimous agreement as to the site, the actual building of the lighthouse was a long way off. There were to be at least as many different and conflicting points of view as to how it and Perim should be defended as there had been possible sites. The site was confirmed early in March 1858 but Wilkins said he could not get on with preparing a detailed plan of the site and estimating the cost of building a redoubt until the strength of the garrison had been decided and what armament was to be provided for. Not wanting to repeat material included in the article Cronstadt Perim? what was eventually built was a lighthouse with no formal fortifications, [the ‘Wellesly option’].

Although there is no record of the order to commence work, the building of the lighthouse had been begun by February 1860 (certainly work on the tower had commenced prior to 15 February). In mid-October work at Perim came to a standstill pending arrival of the light. The officer in charge of building operations, Lieutenant Moore RE, pointed out that he still had no idea of the diameter of the lantern; until he had this he could not start laying the parapet on which the lantern would stand. The staff to work the lighthouse, one tindal and six lascars, left Bombay on 27 December; on 5 January 1861 the commander of the Lady Canning (the Station Ship) was ordered to accommodate them until they could be taken to Perim. All was nearly ready and on 11 January the following Notice to Mariners was issued by the Bombay authorities:

Notice is hereby given that on or after 1st April 1861 a bright revolving light will be placed on Perim Island in the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. The position of the lighthouse is a high piece of ground about 1090 yards south-west of the north-east bluff point of the island. The light is 241 feet above the level of the sea and will be visible from a ship’s deck, say 15 feet above the sea, at about 22 miles in clear weather. The light revolves once every four minutes.

The Annual Report for 1861-62 confirmed that the light had been ‘exhibited’ for the first time on 1 April. It was a bright light that had worked ‘exceedingly well’.

This photograph (below) was taken in 1917. If one compares it with the one taken in 1964, from much closer but fortuitously from the same angle, one can see that the light vertical line in the brickwork visible in 1964 dates from pre-1917. The lighthouse was damaged by Turkish artillery fire in June 1915, one shell scoring a direct hit on the top part. In the 1917 photograph the top of the lighthouse looks pretty new.

[Photograph below reproduced by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum from negative Q13098. Not to be copied without permission of IWM]