A lighthouse to a sailor is like a path to a walker

(autotranslated, could have mistakes)

“Lighthouses are shrines of the seas.

They belong to everyone and are inviolable, like the plenipotentiaries of the powers"

Atlas of Russian lighthouses

At all times, the word lighthouse has been associated with hope, help and salvation for sailors. How many ships and lives were saved thanks to lighthouses...

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It is believed that the first lighthouses appeared with the birth of navigation more than six thousand years ago. There were all kinds of lighthouses: noticeable places in the area, buildings, floating lighthouses, bonfires, “cow beacons” (wandering beacons), lamps, lanterns, pipes, gongs, tom-toms, bells, sirens, cannons. Natural sound beacons were also used: at the extreme ends of some rocky reefs in Great Britain, on Novaya Zemlya, on the Kuril Islands and other places, countless seabirds gather - they raise such a cry that it can be heard several miles out to sea. In the La Perouse Strait in the Far East there is a rocky island called Danger Stone. Before installing an automatic beacon on it, the location of a dangerous island was determined by the cry of sea lions. Having stuck to all the rocks, they raise such a roar that it can be heard for many miles in any weather. Such a natural sound beacon as roaring caves is also known. In some coastal cliffs there are caves, which, in stormy weather, with huge waves breaking into them, are briefly filled with water, while the air from the caves is forced into a small hole located behind and facing the ground. The sound that arises in this case is difficult for a person to bear.

m, located nearby. Until now, despite the level of modern equipment on ships, natural sound beacons continue to be used as an additional means of orientation.

Russia began building lighthouses from the end of the 17th century, from the time of the founding of the regular Russian fleet. The first Russian lighthouse is considered to be the fire lit on April 4, 1704 at the Peter and Paul Fortress. The official date of the creation of the Russian lighthouse service is considered to be June 8 (May 27), 1807, when Emperor Alexander I approved the “Regulations on the maintenance of lighthouses and the staff of the lighthouse crew.” The Regulations provided for the introduction of oil lighting and uniform staffing at all lighthouses (one keeper and five to eight maritime department servants at each lighthouse), and the position of director of the Baltic lighthouses was introduced. All issues of lighthouse construction in Russia, and then in the USSR, were dealt with by the Hydrographic Service of the Navy, formed in 1827.

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Nizhny Novgorod. From the collection of V.P. Korablev

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Lighthouse. Anapa. From the collection of V.P. Korablev

[Beacons that don't exist]()

During the Soviet era, there were a number of projects for monuments-lighthouses of cyclopean dimensions, which for one reason or another were not implemented, for example, a competition project for a lighthouse monument to V.I. Lenin in the Leningrad port: according to the terms of the international competition announced in March 1932, the height of the lighthouse was 110 meters.

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[Rostral columns (St. Petersburg, Neva)]()

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Photo by V.P. Korablev  Rostral column at the finish line VOR 2008-2009

Many people are familiar with the Rostral Columns on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg. They were built according to the design of J. F. Thomas de Thomont simultaneously with the building of the Exchange in 1805-1810. At the tops of the columns there are metal tripods with bowls: in the 19th century. oil was poured into them, which was lit at dusk. One of the columns was a lighthouse for ships on the Malaya Neva, the other pointed the way to the Bolshaya Neva. The lighthouses served until 1885. Nowadays, fires are also lit on the rostral columns, but this only happens during special celebrations. One of the last was the celebrations on the occasion of the finish of the Volvo Ocean Race in June 2009. Today, instead of oil, gas is used, which is supplied to metal tripods through a special pipe.

[Lighthouse in the Scarlet Sails complex (Moscow, Moscow River)]()

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Lighthouse in the Scarlet Sails complex

In Moscow, the port of five seas, you can also find a lighthouse, which was recently built in the Scarlet Sails residential complex in the Stroginskaya floodplain of the Moscow River. In this case, the lighthouse is more of an architectural decoration than a real navigational necessity.

[Lighthouses of Lake Ladoga]()

There are many lighthouses on the inland waterways of Russia. On Lake Ladoga, among others, the Osinovetsky lighthouse (on Cape Storozhevoy) and Storozhensky (on Cape Storozhenno at the entrance to the Svir River) are notable.

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Osinovetsky Lighthouse. Model. Author Savrasov A.

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Storozhensky lighthouse. Staircase

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Osinovetsky lighthouse

The Osinovetsky lighthouse was built in 1905. Its height is 74 meters - a 20-story building. Cape Osinovets is named after the nearby aspen grove, and during the war there was a port through which food was supplied to besieged Leningrad. The lighthouse's spiral staircase has 365 steps. For comparison, participants in the race to the Ostankino TV tower overcome 1,706 steps, but here imagine a lighthouse keeper who has probably climbed to the top of the tower thousands of times.

Storozhensky lighthouse (“Seventh Heaven”), which is believed to be the tallest lighthouse in the Russian Federation and Northern Europe, and the third tallest in the world. Height is approximately 72 meters, 399 steps. In the Storozhno area there are so-called sacrificial stones. One of them is located 4 kilometers east of the lighthouse; it is a large boulder of a characteristic shape - the Pichin stone.

[]()Solovetsky Church-lighthouse (White Sea)

Solovetsky Monastery - Sekiro-Voznesensky Skete - Church of the Ascension.

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Solovetsky lighthouse church. Model. Author Savrasov A.

A church was built on the top of the 74-meter Sekirnaya Mountain in 1861. In a two-story building without altar apses, there are two churches: below - St. Michael the Archangel and on the second floor - the Church of the Ascension. In 1862, the dome of the church was built over the turret of a lighthouse, which began operating in 1867. Until 1904, kerosene lamps were installed in it, and then French apparatus were installed. The lighthouse is located in a light drum above the dome and is still the highest lighthouse on the White Sea (the highest point of the temple is 100 meters above the base of the mountain).

The unusual appearance of this structure involuntarily attracted the attention of pilgrims, and they did not see anything seditious in it. The light coming from the cross and showing wanderers the right path to the Solovetsky monastery acquired a special symbolic meaning for them.

[Askold Lighthouse (Sea of Japan)]()

If in the Baltic Sea there were no special problems with lighthouse construction - the difficulties were the same as in any European state, then in the seas of the North and Far East Russian hydrographers had to solve the most difficult problems.

30 miles from Vladivostok on the northwestern coast of the Sea of ​​Japan is the island. Askold, named after the sail-screw frigate "Askold". The island is an excellent landmark for ships heading to Vladivostok from the south and southeast. Due to its significant height (in the northern part it reaches 353 m), it was a natural lighthouse and on the first Russian maps it was called Mayachny. Ships heading to the port from the east could not pass about. Askold, therefore, it is natural that the island, lying on the sea route to the port, required a navigation fence. In the fall of 1881, the construction of a lighthouse on the island. Askold was completed. The tower was 8.4 m high from the base. Despite the proximity to Vladivostok, the lighthouse workers' work was quite difficult. At first, the lack of communication with the shore was a hindrance, and due to the lack of fresh food and a very damp climate, the lighthouse personnel often fell ill.

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Askold Lighthouse. Photo by V.V. Serebryansky

In 1917, the lighthouse was rebuilt. External features have been preserved to this day.

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Askold Lighthouse. Photo by V.V. Serebryansky

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Askold Lighthouse. Photo by V.V. Serebryansky

This fact is interesting. On September 21, 1951, the construction of a new Chersonesos lighthouse was completed in Sevastopol to replace the old one, destroyed to the ground by the Nazis. A polysol lighting apparatus, delivered from the Pacific Fleet from the Askold lighthouse, was installed in the lantern tower of the new lighthouse. Currently, the Askold lighthouse is equipped with modern light-optical technology and a radio beacon and continues to reliably ensure the safety of navigation on the approaches to Strelok Bay and Vladivostok.

[Beacons are silent]()

The changes that have occurred in Russia over the past decades have also affected the lighthouse service. It is very painful to see how many lighthouses have become dilapidated and destroyed, and it cannot be said that the main reason was the development of progress associated with the advent of modern satellite navigation equipment. In other countries, unused lighthouses are repurposed as hotels or other tourism facilities. There are abandoned lighthouses, familiar to many yachtsmen, for example, on Lake Onega; they can be used as landmarks during the day, but at night they are completely useless.

[Demon Nose (Lake Onega)]()

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Lighthouse Demon Nose. Photo by V.P. Korablev

An abandoned lighthouse on Cape Besov Nos on the eastern coast of Lake Onega near the confluence of the Chernaya River into the lake. More famous is the cape itself, which is considered a unique natural and archaeological monument of the European North, on the stones of which ancient petroglyphs from the Neolithic times were found, one of which is considered to be an image of the “Demon”, to whom the monks of the Murom Monastery in the 15th - 16th centuries.  They drew a cross in order to reduce his devilish power.

[Vasilisin Island (Lake Onega)]()

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Lighthouse on Vasilisin Island. Photo by V.P. Korablev

Abandoned lighthouse on the island. Vasilisin is familiar to many yachtsmen. There was once a weather station on the island and the island was even assigned a postal code, but over time the station closed, and one of the ground fires destroyed the building itself.

Any story about lighthouses would not be complete without mentioning the lighthouse keepers. Lighthouse maker is not a profession, but a way of life. Work in any weather, in any bad weather, at any time... There are many known cases of heroic deeds of lighthouse workers in the name of helping sailors. Unfortunately, for a long time ordinary people knew little about the life and work of lighthouses. It is positive that recently more and more people are starting to write and make films about them. This, of course, is a separate topic.

Text and illustrations: Vasily Korablev

Head of the project “Models of World Lighthouses”

Source of publication: magazine "People of the Wind" (№2(13) summer 2010.

Republication of material only with the permission of the author.