Review of the book "Secrets of Old Lighthouses"

(autotranslated, could have mistakes)

Image removed from public review package. Local review only · not public no-info · oblozhka_zhurnala_ms_.jpgReview of the book in the Navy magazine "Marine Collection" 11.2011

ABOUT LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHTHOUSES

The book of the Sevastopol writer, historian and fleet veteran Sergei Terentyevich Aksentyev “Secrets of old lighthouses: Essays. Anthology of lighthouses" (Sevastopol: Weber Publishing House, 2010. 280 pp.) is truly unique. For the first time, the author made an attempt to combine his essays on decoys, published in various publications, and the lighthouse anthology under one cover. And frankly speaking, this attempt was a success.

16 essays by S.T. Aksentyev are permeated by the author’s love for lighthouses and the lighthouse business. They testify to his deep respect for the builders of the “shrines of the seas” and for those people who lived and live on them, sometimes providing light in the night in the most difficult conditions, helping sailors find the right course in a treacherous sea.

Readers are presented with a gallery of the most interesting historical characters: Leonty Spafarev (the creator of the lighthouse service in Russia), the lighthouse builders of the Scots Stevensons (Robert Alan and Thomas, whose son Robert gave the world “Treasure Island”), the philanthropists Rukavishnikovs (brothers Nikolai and Konstantin equipped a “high-class” shelter for juvenile delinquents, which in 1873 became “Rukavishnikovsky” and became widely known in Europe; Konstantin’s wife, Evdokia Nikolaevna, built the Ilyinsky lighthouse in Feodosia with personal funds in 1898), retired captain 2nd rank Yu.I. Tyurin (since 1977, the head of the Ai-Todor lighthouse near Yalta, who created a unique museum of the history of navigation, lighthouse business and the Hydrographic Service on its territory Navy).

Image removed from public review package. Local review only · not public no-info · oblozhka_knigi_tayny_staryh_mayakov.jpgIn the essay “The Light of Lighthouses” S.T. Aksentiev writes about the meeting of K.G.Paustovsky in 1922 in Batumi with the lighthouse keeper, retired captain 2nd rank M.I.Stavraki (a classmate of Lieutenant P.P. Schmidt) and not without reason assumes that “the execution of Schmidt all these years sat like shrapnel under the very heart of Mikhail Stavraki.” It turns out that Stavraki in 1911-1913. was the keeper of the Ai-Todor lighthouse.

The author also writes about the mystery of the Sarych lighthouse (“Riddles of the White Boat”), unraveled by the historian S. Filimonov, who found out that in the 1920s the keeper of this lighthouse was not former Lieutenant General V.F. Dzhunkovsky (Moscow governor in 1905-1913), as the writer Lev Razgon pointed out in the story “Uninvented,” but P.N. Dzhunkovsky (the general’s second cousin, before the revolution, a major official in the postal and telegraph department in Kharkov).

Few of our contemporaries know about Maria Bagretsova and her “Mayan” family. Meanwhile, during the First World War, this 12-year-old girl almost continuously kept watch at the Svyatonossky lighthouse (at that time the northernmost lighthouse in Russia) and in 1915 she was awarded the silver St. George medal for valor, calmness and a rare conscientious attitude to service.” The author, a former northerner, writes very touchingly about this in his essay “The Light of Beacons Through the Polar Darkness.”

Among the heroes of the book by S.T. Aksentyev we see A.P. Chekhov, who visited not only the Ai-Todor lighthouse, but also visited the Zhonkiersky lighthouse (still wooden) on Sakhalin during his trip to the “convict island”.

S.T. Aksentiev introduces the reader to the difficult daily life of lighthouse workers (“Life on Lighthouses”), explains in a popular form the principles of operation of light-optical equipment used in various eras, including reports that the Swede N.G. Dalen was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1912 for the invention of automatic regulators used in lighthouses (“Fire over the Waves”),

In the essay "Strand" the author talks about the widespread tradition of "coastal law" in Europe in the Middle Ages, which allowed the appropriation of the property of ships in distress, including as a result of deliberately extinguishing lighthouse lights, as well as about the long-term and difficult struggle against this phenomenon.

From the essay “Towers on the Seaside” you can learn not only about the two-century efforts of the British to “tame the Ediston Rocks” (when four lighthouses were built in succession), but also about the achievements of domestic engineers. Thus, under the leadership of honorary academician V.G. Shukhov, in 1911, a “hyperboloid type” lighthouse was built in the Dnieper estuary - the Rear Stanislav-Adzhigolsky lighthouse (an openwork tower 70 m high), which is still in operation today; and in 1985, the talented hydraulic engineer I.O. Alekseev erected a unique Irbensky lighthouse (height 38 m) in the Irbensky Strait of the Baltic Sea, in the northern part of the Mikhailovskaya Shoal.

It should be noted that the author considered it his duty to express his civic position in connection with the topic of the story. Basically, he talks about the preservation of historical heritage (lighthouses) and the memory of people (lighthouses). It is gratifying that some positive progress in this direction has already been noted in connection with the creation of the Association “Maritime Heritage of Russia” (April 2009) and the Interdepartmental Commission on Marine Heritage, formed in accordance with the decision of the Maritime Collegium under the Government of the Russian Federation of December 24, 2010.

The anthology of lighthouses, compiled by S.T. Aksentiev, is represented by prose and poetic works by such authors as Alphonse Daudet, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ray Bradbury. Jules Bern. Robert Stevenson, Ivan Bunin, Novella Matveeva and others. Undoubtedly, the publication of these works significantly complements the book about lighthouses and lighthouses, giving it literary completeness.

The book is equipped with many interesting illustrations, mostly in color. which gives it even more value. Among the shortcomings, we note only a very limited edition. But this is not the author's fault...

Captain 1st Rank V. Smirnov, Doctor of Historical Sciences