Lightship Gannet update
The latest news in the soap opera that is the Lightship Gannet comes to me from the legendary Russ Rowlett, compiler and editor of the the Lightshouse Directory, the unofficial bible for all lighthouse enthusiasts. Lightships were once very common around the shores of Ireland and indeed the small island to the east of us. They were located wherever it was too dangerous, or too economically unviable to build a lighthouse, such as the Saltees off the coast of county Wexford or the shifting sands of Dublin Bay. Nowadays, these guardians of our coastline have all but disappeared. The only complete lightship left in Ireland is moored in Strangford Lough; there is a mast and light on one of the quays in Arklow; another lightship is, I believe, being used as a floating restaurant on the Seine in Paris. Lightship Gannet, built in 1954, was stationed off the county Down coast at the site of the very old South Rock lighthouse, one of the world's first wave-washed lighthouses. It w...