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ended up being used as a repository for the arguably less worthy PLKs, a place to put
them, in effect, where they couldn't cause any more bother!
Alittleknownfactisthat,certainlyinthesecondpartofthetwentiethcentury,minor
orautomaticlightswereregardedaslessreliablethanthemannedlighthousesandlight-
dues charged on them were accordingly considerably less.
Being a career lightkeeper also meant that every few years, just like the military, he
was subject to being posted to another lighthouse, with the consequent family upheav-
al. This state of affairs lasted until the 1970s (and the forty-hour week) when it was
decided to make local assistants established keepers. This would give them a full-time
job,buttheywouldremainat'their'lighthouse,residentintheirownhome.Thiswould
remove at a stroke one of the Board's biggest headaches, i.e. providing accommoda-
tion at the station for their full-time keepers. Broadly speaking, they would be full-time
lightkeepers, but would remain in one location with personnel rising from three to four
full-time keepers, with obvious adjustments to the watch-keeping rota to take this into
account. OLKs would still be retained and utilised as and when needed . Many OLKs
weregiventheopportunitytobecomeLALKsandquiteafewdidtakeadvantageofthe
opportunity, but in other cases the job was advertised locally.
On the offshore 'rock' lighthouses, they had hitherto been manned by four keepers:
a PLK and two ALKs, with a third ALK ashore. The 'rock' keepers and their families
lived in various towns around the Scottish and Manx coasts with the men going out to
do several weeks' duty at their stations, the changeovers being effected by either a loc-
al retained boatman or one of the three lighthouse tenders then in use. The main shore
stations were in Oban, Granton and Stromness and generally consisted of several 'four
in a block' houses, one for each lighthouse. In Stromness for example, there was Sule
Skerry, Copinsay, Pentland Skerries and Stroma. Elsewhere, the families of those on
Sanda lived in Campbeltown and Pladda in Lamlash, on Arran. Girvan accommodated
the Ailsa Craig crew, and Breasclete the Flannans, so, as can be seen, the keepers and
their families were fairly widely scattered. It could be said that double-manning the
rocks was how the NLB chose to really bring themselves into the twentieth century.
Once double-manning was introduced, each rock took on a complement of six keep-
ers; two complete crews of three; two PLKs and four ALKs, so that there was always
one complete crew on the rock and one ashore.A rock keeper would carry out twenty-
eight days of duty at the lighthouse, followed by twenty-eight days ashore, where he
would be free to do whatever he wanted. Generally, holidays would be taken during the
twenty-eight days ashore.
Cape Wrath became a 'rock' when it was eventually deemed too remote for the fam-
iliestoremain.CouncilhouseswereprovidedinDingwall,afairdistanceaway,andthe
keepers initially travelled backwards and forwards by taxi.
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