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History: Lamp-Lighters Of The Sea (1961) | British Pathé

published on 18 May 2020 - 97 -

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Found on YouTube, Created by "British Pathé"

Sailors are seen demonstrating the process of maintaining lightships, boats that acts as anchored lighthouses, and the 'street lamps of the sea' , buoys, in this colourful footage from 1961.

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(FILM ID:139.15)
Harwich, Essex.

Various shots of a Trinity House ship, The Vestal, leaving the harbour. It moves out to the Thames Estuary and moors alongside a light ship called 'Tongue'(yes, really!). Various shots as the anchor chain on the light ship is pulled in and replaced with a new one. Our ship pulls away from the light ship and moves off to find some buoys, "those street lamps of the sea".

Various navigation shots; a man on the bridge plots the course; C/U of the course being marked on a map. The Captain signals to the engine room as the ship approaches a buoy in the sea. Two men stand on the buoy and attach a winch to it; the buoy is hoisted aboard.

Several shots show the cleaning of the hanging buoy; seaweed and mussels are sloughed off the base, chain and anchor and thrown back into the sea. The cleaned buoy is then lowered back into the water.

Note: there is no print for this issue. Correspondence on file about the filming of this story between Pathe and Trinity House, plus notes on the sequences filmed.

Cuts exist - see separate record.

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Harwich, Essex.

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