Commissioned on April 12, 1824, Green Point lighthouse, often erroneously called Mouille Point lighthouse that was built years later on the present site of Cape Peninsula University of Technology at Granger Bay, has been a navigation beacon for 200 winters!
It is the oldest lighthouse in southern Africa, and, taking bearings on it, thousands of ships have passed that way in wartime, in peace, in calm weather and amid extremely heavy seas.
In its initial years, the lighthouse had two lights, each with a single-wick Argand lamp and fuelled by whale oil, a system that has been upgraded several times over the years and, currently, its white incandescent light is visible from 22 nautical miles.
The original tower was heightened by several metres to its present height of 16m and, over the years, the light housing has undergone several changes.
For more than three score years and 12, the lighthouse has been part of my maritime experience. On those nights when fog rolled in, I – then a real kortbroek – would open my bedroom curtains that were relics of World War II blackouts and, from my bed, would watch the fog slowly enveloping our home in Little Mowbray. Crazy! some readers might remark, but that goes with my maritime addiction.
More memorable, though, was the sonorous, distant boom of the lighthouse’s foghorn that, on those foggy nights, blasted its warning to ships, some of which – including vessels of prominent shipping lines like Blue Star and Lykes, as well as most local fishing craft – did not have radar or other modern navigational equipment of the time.
They relied instead on the vigilance and ears of watchkeepers for safe passage along the coast during fog.
While its 30-second booms with their abrupt end held a fascination for me in distant Mowbray, that foghorn created a stir when it was installed in 1923.
Protesting the noisy intrusion into their lives, Green Point residents petitioned the mayor, but the interests of maritime safety won the day, and it continued its mournful booming, becoming known as Moaning Minnie.
In 1986, the old foghorn on the deck at the top of the tower was replaced by a lower-decibel foghorn situated closer to the sea as most seagoing vessels now have radar and other electronic navigational aids. With navigation systems advancing to really high-tech levels, foghorns will become redundant.
Union-Castle mailships once left Cape Town for the coast on Thursdays at 9pm. Bound for East London in 1954, we were aboard Pretoria Castle during one of those night sailings, and, rolling gently in the open ocean, the liner gathered speed for Port Elizabeth.
From the drive-in restaurant Doll’s House across the road and from the seafront promenade, I had seen the Green Point lighthouse umpteen times but, from the deck of the mailship, so impressive on that kortbroek were its flashes amid the city lights, that those vivid images remain with me.
Serious accidents have occurred within the range of the lighthouse’s beam. On Easter Sunday night 1922, fog had shrouded the bay when Union-Castle’s intermediate liner, Gaika, approached the harbour. Despite the lighthouse’s booming foghorn, she grounded at Green Point.
The powerful harbour tug Ludwig Wiener and two other tugs rushed to the scene, put up lines and began the refloating operation. However, as the other tugs had lost steam, only Ludwig Wiener was towing when the liner refloated, although Gaika made port under her own power.
Within an hour, Ludwig Wiener was attending the Norwegian freighter Vinstra, also ashore at Green Point! Refloating this casualty took two days with the tug remaining connected to the vessel, and eventually, on a high tide and with a larger swell running, the tug refloated Vinstra and towed her into port.
Inward from Australia in fog on April 1, 1947, and laden with wool, George M Livanos grounded close to the lighthouse, many dismissing wreck reports as a joke! She fractured and, later, caught fire, her wreck remaining visible for a long time.
Many will recall the grounding of Safmarine’s freighter SA Seafarer amid wild weather on July 1, 1966, a serious disregard for safe navigation standards.
Apparently, landing atop the wreck of George M Livanos and with huge waves sweeping over her, she broke her back almost immediately. Laudably, the lighthouse keeper fixed the light’s beam to illuminate the wrecked vessel as, with her engineroom tidal, she had no power.
At daybreak, helicopters miraculously airlifted more than 60 passengers and crew to safety.
Late on Saturday night February 3, 1968 and in calm conditions, the laden Shell tanker Sivella grounded close to the SA Seafarer wreck – a major crisis that threatened extensive oil pollution if Sivella’s tanks were breached. When the German salvage tug Atlantic could not move the tanker, Acting Port Captain Arthur Lyle ordered two harbour tugs to the scene, an inspired move as the combined power of three tugs pulled Sivella from the reef, averting a pollution catastrophe.
And before these, were the wrecks of Thermopylae, Australian and others.
I understand that this two-century-old lighthouse, a Cape icon, will be open to the public on Saturday.
* Ingpen (brian@capeports.co.za) is a freelance journalist and author of 10 maritime books.
Cape Times