Death Defying Lighthouse Keepers
"With winds frequently in the 50 knot range, and seas breaking quite literally OVER the entire lighthouse, changing shifts with these keepers was death defying to say the least."
Soon we'll be talking about Taxi Drivers and Pilots in the same nostalgic tones as we speak of Lighthouse Keepers... But while it might be sad that service based jobs are dying a slow death at the hands of 21st century technology, some jobs are probably better handled by machines. Like manning a lighthouse in the middle of the Iroise Sea.
On the 29th of January 2004, Kéréon, the lighthouse in question; said goodbye to it's last tenant. Now remotely maintained, the lighthouse runs as smoothly as ever, albeit with a little less soul. So why was it decided that the gorgeous interior of this lighthouse should be inhabited only by machines?
Two reasons, the first is that paying some guy to sit in a lighthouse and keep a rotating beacon functioning, can easily be accomplished by whacking a monitor on it and flying an engineer out in the once-in-a-blue-moon scenario that it breaks.
The second, is illustrated VERY clearly below. With winds frequently in the 50 knot range, and seas breaking quite literally OVER the entire lighthouse, changing shifts with these keepers was death defying to say the least. Incredibly, in the 88 years of its manned existence, nobody was injured.
Check out the amazing footage of two lighthouse keepers changing shifts on Kéréon Lighthouse.
