There’s some good news for the stately Southwold Lighthouse in Suffolk, UK, pictured at left. Trinity House has decided that it will not shut down the lighthouse as was planned after all. It was one of 11 others that had been marked for closure by 2010. Lowestoft Lighthouse, further north, also won a reprieve. So what saved them? Satellite Navigation Technology, otherwise known as GPS, is just “not reliable enough yet” to risk turning off the light.

Duncan Glass, Trinity House’s director of navigational requirements, said in the article at the Telegraph.co.uk site, that “At the moment, GPS is not considered robust or available enough and, while there is a system we hope will be a radio back-up in the future, that is some years away. And, of course, mariners don’t have to carry anything they don’t want to. Having tested ourselves on what it takes to replace visual aid navigation with GPS and radio navigation, we are a long, long way from that. Nothing is strong enough or reliable enough to take the place of lighthouses and I think it’s inevitable they will be working for decades and decades to come. I can’t see a day without them.”

GPS Not the Answer

Relying on GPS to navigate, whether in a car or ship, is not always the wisest move. People begin to rely on the directions given, without using their common sense. To inject a personal note here, back when I was an Emergency Medical Services Instructor Coordinator, I’d teach my students to not rely on the latest technology, to the detriment of the patient. Many times I’d see an EMT staring at a pulse oximeter, which measures a person’s oxygen levels, and never look at the patient to see they were having difficulty breathing.

The same with relying on GPS as an automobile navigation system. The system will tell a driver to “turn here,” and they blindly obey, but unfortunately turn onto railroad tracks and get hit by the oncoming train. See here and here. Even the Telegraph has a story alongside the lighthouse one about leaflets being passed out to truckdrivers telling them not to rely on GPS. See here. The technology should be an adjunct to our own senses, not a replacement.

From an email sent to me by reader David Gamage, of Jay, Maine as I was writing this article:

There has been suggestions in recent years that lighthouse may be discontinued because they no longer serve to aid navigation with the current use of sat nav and gps. It is interesting to note that the Trinity House has come to the conclusion that electronic navigantion is not reliable or accurate enough to replace lighthouses for coastal navigation. And unlike the CG aids-to-nav group in District 13 I doubt Trinity needed to conduct a survey of boaters to come to this conclusion.

A study of boat accidents by Trinity House a few years ago came to the conclusion that a significant number of groundings and collisions happened as a result of too heavy reliance on electronic nav. and with failure to look out the window.

In a story in the Portland Press Herald a few months ago the Portland Harbor pilots stated that they relied on the buoys and lights to safely enter and leave the harbor and did not rely on electronics and computer.

Not too many years ago a Maine Marine Patrol struck a ledge near Vinal Haven and sunk. This from running at night using gps as the sole tool for navigation. Also there was an incident when a Coast Guard 41-foot boat from Station Rockland struck the Rockland Breakwater in fog and a guy on the bow was thrown onto the rocks. The boat would have sunk but for having hung up in the granite blocks.

I have a summer residence on Whitehead Island and from there I can see boats in the Mussel Ridge Channel entering and leaving Penobscot Bay. The ones who know what they are doing use their search lights at night to locate the channel buoys and markers. They are looking out the windows.

But then there was the incident last summer when a sailboat came in before daylight and anchored off my place on the island. The guy on the boat rowed ashore much later in the morning. He told me he was upset because he had traveled all the way from Bath to Whitehead that night with his auto-pilot broken and he had to stay awake at the helm all night. Then he asked me what that lighthouse was directly across the channel.

In summary, maybe the CG AToN folks would like to justify downgrading and discontinuing visual aids but CG Search and Rescue strongly recommends using these aids and not to rely on electronics.

The Fate of the Others

I trust that Trinity House will see the advantages of keeping the other nine lit and functioning, for the same reasons mentioned above. They have yet to consult on those. The other 58 lighthouses under Trinity House’s wing were not mentioned for possible closure in the report from 2005. Lighthouse lovers around the world can rejoice at this news. Two up, nine more to go.

Photo Credits:

• Southwold Lighthouse by Grievous Angel. Some rights reserved.
• Lowestoft Lighthouse by pakefild. Some rights reserved.

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