CHERSONESS LIGHTHOUSE

(autotranslated, could have mistakes)

It is installed on the cape of the same name in the southwestern part of the Crimean peninsula, 6 miles from Sevastopol and provides navigation on the approaches to it, fencing off a dangerous reef extending to the west of the cape. One of the oldest lighthouses built by Russia on the shores of the Black Sea.

By the end of the 70s of the 18th century, Russia was firmly entrenched on the shores of the Black and Azov Seas. The ships of the Azov-Don flotilla made long voyages to various parts of the coast. To ensure their navigation, temporary primitive lighthouses and signs were built. From the documents of the Russian naval commander Admiral F.F. Ushakov it is known that in the 1790s such a lighthouse existed on Cape Chersonesus. In the “Journal of the Black Sea Fleet's voyage in search of the Turkish fleet” there is, in particular, the following entry, dated July 10-15, 1791: “... throughout the whole day the wind was calm, variable from different directions, in which, tacking with the fleet, by nightfall it bypassed the Chersonesos Cape... At 1/2 eight o'clock in the afternoon, bearing from me, the Chersonesos lighthouse” [115].

It is difficult to say whether this lighthouse was shining, since no description of it has been found. Most likely, Ushakov refers to a lighthouse as some distinctive navigation sign placed at the tip

and cape. This assumption is confirmed by the “Notes on the Black Sea...” [119], presented by Captain Count Heyden to the Admiralty Board in 1806. In them he reports that on the Black Sea there are lighthouses only at the Strait of Constantinople and at the Danube mouth. “Even... the beautiful port of Sevastopol is fenced only with milestones.”

In May 1803, the Admiralty Board, having heard a report from the office of the chief commander of the Black Sea Fleet on the state of the navigation fence on the Russian Black Sea coast, decided to build “a night lighthouse and guardhouses for servants” on the Chersonesos Cape [104].

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Lighthouse Chersonesos. Rice. 1850

The lighthouse was built according to the design and under the supervision of an experienced lighthouseman, director of lighthouses of the Baltic Sea L.V. Spafariev, who was specially sent to the Black Sea Fleet. The installation site was chosen by the commander of the Sevastopol port, Captain 1st Rank P. M. Rozhkov (later a prominent figure in the Russian fleet, admiral).

Construction was completed in 1816, and the lighthouse opened regular lighting on June 16, 1817. It was a stone conical tower 36 m high, topped with a wooden lantern of a regular decagonal shape, 3.3 m high and 4.6 m in diameter. On November 11, 1829, the wooden lantern was replaced with an iron one. The lighting system, consisting of 16 Argand oil lamps with reflectors, provided a fire visibility range of up to 16 miles. At first, the lighthouse shone with a constant white light, but in 1824 it was made “revolving,” i.e., flashing, in order to distinguish it from the lights of the Inkerman lighthouses built in 1821 (see the essay “Inkerman Beacon Lighthouses”).

Three outbuildings were built near the tower: for the caretaker, crew and storerooms. In 1837, a rescue station was established.

Initially, the lighthouse was serviced by a non-commissioned officer and six privates of the Sevastopol crew. placed it on them

axis, in addition to ensuring the normal operation of the lighting apparatus, conducting meteorological observations, monitoring the migration of birds, sea conditions and passing ships. Since 1850, chief officers of the Corps of Navigators who were unfit for health reasons to serve on warships began to be appointed to the position of caretaker. Since 1866, all service personnel became civilian employees.

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View of the Chersonese Cape and the lighthouse from the sea. Rice. 1850

With the beginning of the Crimean War (1853-1856), guards, signalmen and telegraph operators were additionally stationed at the lighthouse. At the head of this team of 12 people was an officer. An observation post was deployed to monitor the appearance of enemy ships at sea and the passage of all ships. The lighthouse was initially switched to a special mode of operation, and when the Anglo-French fleet approached the shores of the Crimea, it stopped lighting completely. The lighting apparatus was removed and carefully covered. Thanks to these measures, after the end of the war the lighthouse was quickly restored. All that was required was repair of the lighting apparatus, which was done at the Sevastopol Admiralty of the Russian Shipping and Trade Society. During repairs, the lighthouse was illuminated by a temporary portable apparatus mounted on a wooden platform.

A few years after the lighthouse began operating, the shore where it was installed had to be reinforced with a stone wall, “to resist the rush of the waves, which, in strong winds, rise to such an extent that through the wall they reach the building itself, dragging stones with it...” [102].

In 1861, the breakwater around the lighthouse was washed away, the service premises were filled with water to a height of 1.5 m, and the lantern was damaged. During

During the renovation, a new diopter lighting device was installed in the lantern. On this occasion, the Hydrographic Department published the following notice to seafarers: "... on the southwestern coast of the Tauride Peninsula on Cape Chersonesus, instead of the previous rotating catoptric apparatus, a new, rotating, catodioptric, olophthal apparatus of the 1st category was installed. A white light is visible between the bearings N0 65° through N, W and S to SO 35°22' (from 144°38' to 65°. -Auth.) and appears every minute in the form of a strong flash. The height of the light from the base is 104.5 feet, above sea level 108 feet. The lighthouse tower is round, white, the lantern on it is also white” [120].

In 1873, to protect the lighthouse from the sea, a new massive stone enclosing wall was built, encircling all the buildings from the sea side, and on both sides of the lighthouse yard on the shore of the cape, a “riprap” was made to reflect waves and protect the entire tip of the low-lying cape from flooding.

In 1887, the elements again tested the lighthouse. During the storm on December 16 and 17, the foundation of the wall fence, built in 1873, was washed away in several places, the rockfill in front of the wall and near the shore

were destroyed. On December 18, the lighthouse keeper A. Fedotov telegraphed to Sevastopol: “The storm flooded the yard and buildings, I ask you to save the employees from death.”

The next day he reported: “During the storm on December 17, 1887, the swell from the sea was thrown over the stone elevations of the embankment... and at 11 o’clock there was a strong storm. A lake had already formed around the lighthouse... In some places the water reached 6 feet... The stable, barn, storerooms, cellar were flooded... The water rose to the windows of the buildings. Women and children were sent waist-deep into the nearest village... The servants, having collected bread and petroleum and linen, took refuge in the tower to ensure proper lighting. Before that, they rescued the crew of the Turkish brig with its cargo, which was wrecked. 10 people drowned, and 4 were saved. After the rescue, they swam to the lighthouse on horseback.” [121].

The commander of the Sevastopol port, Rear Admiral M. N. Kumani, urgently sent people and rescue equipment to the lighthouse on carts. Help came on time.

After the storm, the tower and other buildings had to be completely repaired. In addition, on the south side of the tower an additional shaft was built from local

stone

In 1888, “Russian petroleum” - kerosene - began to be used in lighting lamps instead of oil, and in 1910 the lamp was replaced with a kerosene burner. In 1900, a new type of French-made Barbier-Benard siren was installed for fog signals. In 1902, a second floor was built over the residential building, which significantly improved the living conditions of the lighthouse workers.

In 1900-1905, A. S. Popov conducted experiments on radio communications at the lighthouse. Soon after this, wireless telegraphy began to be used on ships of the Black Sea Fleet. Subsequently, samples of new equipment were repeatedly tested at the lighthouse. So, in 1933, a domestic RM radio beacon with a rotating radiation pattern was tested here (a conventional radio receiver and a stopwatch were used to determine the direction). The test results showed the possibility of determining the direction from the ship to the radio beacon with an accuracy of 2°.

During the First World War, the lighthouse was turned on only by special order of the head of the raid guards. To ensure secrecy, the light source was placed in a red cylinder made from spare bent red glass, thus creating a red fire while maintaining the same

her characteristics.

In 1939, the lighthouse was equipped with the first example of the domestic circular radio beacon RMS-2 with a range of 50 miles and a Triton-type nautofon.

On June 22, 1941, in accordance with the documents in force in the event of the outbreak of war, the city of Sevastopol was darkened, all the lights of the navigation equipment were extinguished, but the Khersones and Inkerman lighthouses were working - communication with them was suddenly interrupted, and they did not receive the command to extinguish the lights. We had to urgently send motorcyclists with the appropriate order.

The enemy perfectly understood the importance of the lighthouse for the ships based in the main base of the Black Sea Fleet, and from the first days of the war, they rained down an avalanche of shells and bombs on it, but the lighthouse continued to operate. Our ships needed his fire. The destroyed lantern was restored again and again by the lighthouses and shone in a manipulated mode, showing the way to the sailors.

At that time, the lighthouse was headed by Andrei Ilyich Dudar, Frolov, Shevelev, the Chudimovs, Alisov, and Redkin worked with him. M. F. Dudar and Pasha Goroshko conducted observations at the weather station. Gradually, all the lighthouse workers left to defend the city, and only A.I. Dudar and senior technician Shevelev remained at the lighthouse. During the bombing and shelling, they removed the equipment and hid themselves, but as soon as the shelling stopped, they restored fire again, ensuring the entry and exit of our ships from besieged Sevastopol.

In June 1942, the lighthouse was attacked by more than 60 enemy aircraft. All residential and service premises were destroyed, holes appeared in the tower, lighting equipment was broken, acetylene cylinders exploded and caused a fire. Then the lighthouses began

use portable lanterns, lighting them first on one platform of the tower, then on another, ensuring navigational safety of the navigation of our ships and submarines.

“Look, what the Krauts wanted, to destroy the guiding star,” Andrei Ilyich insisted, “we will shine for our sailors even from hell!”

In June alone, 11 transport flights, 33 warship flights and 77 submarine flights were made to Sevastopol, and all of them were guided by the path of Chersonesos

th lighthouse.

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Lighthouse Chersonesos

A. I. Dudar later wrote about these days in his memoirs:

"On June 30, an order was received to provide the lighthouse for the evacuation of Sevastopol. We installed another acetylene lantern below, on the warehouse building, but it was soon destroyed. Then a new one was strengthened on the ruins of the tower. On the night of July 3, a whole series of shells hit the lighthouse, but it had already done its job and was no longer needed."

Cape Chersonese became the last piece of Sevastopol land that the city’s defenders continued to defend. The commander of the Water District Security and the commander of the Air Force of the Sevastopol Defense Region moved their command post here, and temporary berths for submarines were equipped here. The enemy concentrated fire of rare density on a small area of ​​the cape. And many years later, traces of war were visible on the cape.

Until the last days of defense, Maria Fedorovna Dudar and Pasha Goroshko conducted observations and supplied the pilots and artillerymen with weather data. On July 4, fascist tanks burst into the lighthouse territory. And then here P. Goroshko’s husband, assistant to the NKVD commissioner, junior political instructor P. M. Silaev, accomplished his last feat. He told the Germans that he could tell where the underground airfield was located and other important information.

e information. The Nazis brought him and his wife to the headquarters located nearby. The grenades thrown by Silaev, which he hid in his leather jacket, killed all the fascists in the building. Heroes also died. After the war, one of the streets of Sevastopol was named after Pavel Silaev, and a bronze monument to the hero was erected on Cape Chersonesus.

The head of the lighthouse Dudar, even wounded in both legs, did not leave his post. He continued to keep watch until the last ship left Sevastopol. Only after this he dismantled the lighting equipment and buried it in a cache not far from the lighthouse town. He had nothing left to evacuate from the city and he ended up in captivity, where he remained until the liberation of Sevastopol.

On November 5, 1944, the surviving residents of the city and a small garrison of the main base of the Black Sea Fleet greeted the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, decorated with colorful flags, returning to the liberated Sevastopol. From the ships the ruins of the once beautiful city - the glory of the Russian fleet - were visible; the beautiful slender tower of the Chersonesos lighthouse, well known to every Black Sea sailor, was not in its usual place. It was destroyed to the ground, but the lighthouse has already returned to its glory

new watch - on the monolithic stones disfigured by explosions that remained from the tower, an acetylene unit stood on crutches-supports. And soon a triangular wooden tower with a lantern on top shot up in its usual place.

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Chersonesos lighthouse at night

On May 12, 1947, the lighthouse was again received by Andrei Ilyich Dudar, who had begun to recover from battle wounds and illnesses. Here, at this lighthouse, in 1893 he was born into a family of hereditary lighthouse workers, grew up and in 1939 replaced his deceased father. This was his home lighthouse, and he considered it his duty to restore it to its former form.

On September 21, 1951, the construction of the new Chersonesos lighthouse was completed, and the 36-meter slender tower made of white Inkerman stone again sparkled in the southern sun. A polyzonal lighting device, delivered from the Pacific lighthouse Askold, was installed in the tower lantern, providing a range of up to 16 miles.

In subsequent years, the lighthouse was rebuilt, landscaped, and its technical equipment was improved. Gasification of the town was carried out, living quarters and a new wave protection wall were built.

In 1973, the RMO-64 radar transponder beacon was installed at the lighthouse; in 1975, an electronic radio beacon time system was put into operation, regulating the operation of a group of radio beacons.

In March 1949, during a severe storm, the lighthouse area was flooded, and movement around the town was only possible by boat. On the night of January 5-6, 1966, the level

the water level in the lighthouse area rose by 0.5–0.7 m. The same misfortune befell the lighthouse during the storm on November 6, 1987. And although storms and flooding caused some damage to equipment and living quarters, they did not affect the normal operation of the lighthouse. Every night its fire reliably showed the sailors the way to Sevastopol Bay.

Currently, a whole lighthouse village has grown up on the once deserted Cape of Chersonesos. In its center rise two two-story 16-apartment residential buildings with loggias. There is a well-maintained beach by the sea, a sauna, and playgrounds for children. A telephone and water supply are connected to the lighthouse.