Algoa Bay has four lighthouses. The online resource Lighthouses South Africa has the following info on them all:
CAPE RECIFE (Commissioned in 1851, still operational):
‘Requests for a lighthouse at Cape Recife date back to 1811, when various harbor officials began to push for a navigational aid to safeguard the coastal trade. The issue was taken a step further in August 1827, when a petition requesting that a lighthouse be built on the western shore of Algoa Bay at public expense was submitted. Frederick Korsten offered to donate the necessary land, and the idea was supported by the 1828 Commission of Inquiry Report on Cape trade and harbor facilities.
There was no further progress until 1835, when another proposal was put forward. The local authorities cunningly timed their petition to coincide with a visit to Port Elizabeth by Governor Benjamin D’Urban, going so far as to organize an elaborate picnic for him at the proposed site. D’Urban refused to commit to the project, but did allow Captain Charles Selwyn of the Royal Engineers to erect a marker on a hillock in the center of the peninsular. It consisted of a white-painted spar with a black cask mounted on top of it, and became known – unsurprisingly – as “Selwyn’s Beacon”.
Back in the Cape Colony, Chief Engineer Charles Mitchell had begun to actively campaign for the erection of lighthouses at Mouille Point, Cape Agulhas, Simon’s Town, and Cape Recife. The reluctance of the authorities to proceed with the build of a lighthouse at Cape Recife was finally overcome by the wreck of the HMS Thunderbolt, a British wooden-hulled paddle-driven steam-powered warship which struck an uncharted reef off the headland on the 3rd of February 1847. The project eventually got off the ground in February 1848, when Colonial Secretary John Montagu personally chose a site and commissioned a local architect to draft a plan.
Construction started in August 1849, under the supervision of G.W. Pilkington, son of George Pilkington, Civil Engineer for the Colony. The build was completed in March 1851, and the lighthouse was finally commissioned on the 1st of April 1851. The structure originally consisted of a 24 meter (79 feet) octagonal masonry tower adjoined by two keeper’s quarters, but these dwellings were demolished in 1960 and replaced with two double-story blocks of flats. The tower was first painted with four alternate bands of white and red, but the red bands were changed to black in 1929.
The original first-order Henri Lepaute lens is still in use today. It comprises 2 sections, a revolving portion and a fixed drum portion, consisting of upper and lower refracting prisms. The revolving portion comprises 8 panels of dioptric lenses, rotating on a set of 6 vertical steel rollers guided by 2 sets of 6 horizontal brass rollers. In 1930, a Chance Brothers 110 millimeter burner was installed, but a 400 watt metal-halide lamp is currently in use. During 1988 the characteristic was changed from one flash every 60 seconds to one flash every 30 seconds, when complaints were received about the long eclipse. On the 18th of August 1998, in a deliberate act of vandalism, the bull’s eye and a few prisms of one of the lens panels were smashed when a bullet was fired at the lighthouse. After numerous attempts the conclusion was reached that the damaged lens panel could not be repaired, and the pattern had to be permanently changed to a 3-flash group every 117 seconds in November 2000.’
DONKIN RESERVE (THE HILL) Lighthouse (Commissioned 1861 and decommissioned in 1973):
‘When the Cape Recife Lighthouse was being planned in the late 1840s, the harbor board also tried to entice the government into building a lighthouse in Port Elizabeth itself. The project did not get off the ground until early 1857, when the matter was discussed by the Harbor Master, H.G. Simpson, and assistant government engineer, Matthew Woodifield. They decided that the best site would adjacent to the Donkin Memorial, and Simpson rather thoughtlessly suggested that the pyramid should be dismantled and the stones used to build the lighthouse. Local residents reacted to this proposal with fury and indignation, and put together a petition to restore the memorial and build the lighthouse alongside it.
Arguments about cost and siting resulted in further delays, and it was only in May 1860 that the harbor board engineer, Alfred Warren, was given instructions to commence the build. Construction was completed a year later, and the lighthouse was commissioned on the 1st of June 1861. It consisted of a 17 meter (55 feet) masonry tower, fitted with a fixed occulting lamp which had a range of 12 nautical miles.
A “time ball” was installed in August 1865, and activated at 13:00 each day by a signal from the observatory in Cape Town. There were a number of teething problems and irregularities, but by 1867 it was reported that the device had become “a most valuable addition to the port”. The light source was replaced with a Chance Brothers vapor burner in 1906, the height of the tower was increased by 9 meters (30 feet) in 1929, and the tower was repainted with various daymarks at regular intervals. But all of these changes were to no avail; the lighthouse became indistinguishable amongst the bright lights of the city, and eventually it was decided to decommission it and erect a new light located near the mouth of the Papenkuils River at Deal Party. This changeover occurred on the 31st of October / 1st of November 1973.’
BIRD ISLAND (First lighthouse structure commissioned in 1852. Current structure commissioned 1873, still operational):
‘After a number of ships had come to grief on the scattered group of rocks now known as Bird Island, the provision of a lighthouse became a hotly debated subject. The Governor of the Cape Colony at the time, Sir Harry Smith, eventually agreed to the erection of a wooden lighthouse, and a rickety pyramidal building was commissioned on the 1st of December 1852. The first lightkeeper, William Isaac Newton, soon realized that he faced living conditions which could only be described as bleak and harsh. The atrocious weather and lack of water was compounded by the paucity and late delivery of provisions, sometimes crawling with weevils and maggots. The signal lamp was fueled by either seal or whale oil which was often rancid before it even reached the island, making it to smoke so badly that it “dimmed the lamps beyond usefulness”. The heat of the flames regularly caused the glass mantles to break, and within a week of starting operations, one lamp was out of order and three mantles had broken. Newton was forced to resort to using ordinary household lamps and even candles, an action which completely negated the purpose of the lighthouse.
In November 1871, the colonial government agreed to the construction of a more permanent lighthouse. Mr. B. Godfrey of Cape Town was contracted to build the structure, under the supervision of Joseph Flack, and the lighting apparatus, watchroom, lanterns, iron floors, girders, and stairs were to be supplied by Chance Brothers and Company from Birmingham, England.
Work began in March 1872, and would have been completed before the end of that year were it not for a delay in shipping some of the components from England. The trenches for the foundations had to be blasted out of the hard rock base, and the foundations themselves constructed out of heavy rough stones built with mortar made from coarse shells, shell lime and driftsand. The 20 meter (66 feet) high square tower was erected on top of this platform, showing on its north and south sides four circular apertures connected to each other by a recess and a large moulding which formed them into a cross. Various other buildings were also fabricated, including two cottages with underground water storage tanks and a signal building equipped with a flag staff. The new lighthouse became active for the first time on the 1st of May 1873.
Life on Bird Island was still extremely difficult. All supplies had to be transported by boat from Port Elizabeth, and up until 1906, the only form of communication was via carrier pigeon. The lighthouse keepers would supplement their diet by fishing or collecting eggs from gannets and penguins, and their isolation would only occasionally be relieved by sporadic visits from seal hunters and guano collectors.
The height of the tower was increased by 6 meters (20 feet) in 1893, and the lighting apparatus was changed at various intervals as more modern technology became available. The lighthouse became fully automated in 1968, thus removing the need for onsite keepers, and today maintenance is carried out by technicians who are transported to the island by helicopter.’
DEAL LIGHT (Commissioned in 1973, still operational):
This structure was commissioned after the Donkin Reserve (The Hill) lighthouse was decommissioned in 1973. It has a tower height of 22 meters, a luminous intensity of 592,000 candelas and a 24 nautical mile range.
