Is a lighthouse still a lighthouse when the light goes out and no one’s left to call it home? These 7 scenic sentinels slowly succumbing to the endless onslaught of wind and waves stand – barely – as solitary reminders of a time when fog-piercing lighthouse beams guided wayward mariners from the cold clutches of the devil and the deep blue sea.

Mys Aniva, Sakhalin, Russia

(images via: Flavorwire and English Russia)

Built under extremely difficult conditions on a formerly jagged rock just off the southeastern-most cape of Sakhalin island, the Mys Aniva lighthouse has seen a lot of history over its 3/4 of a century lifespan. Japan ordered the lighthouse built in the late 1930s when Sakhalin was divided between that country and the USSR. Sometime after the Soviets seized the whole of Sakhalin at the end of World War II, they installed an RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) to supply electricity to the lamp – yes, this was a nuclear-powered lighthouse!

(image via: Remembering Letters and Postcards)

The fall of communism in the early 1990s led to a decade of near-chaos with funds for all purposes in short supply. The Mys Aniva lighthouse, isolated though it was and is, has been looted and ransacked for its metal fittings though luckily its RTGs were removed before the unofficial salvage crews arrived.

Grand Harbor Lighthouse on Fish Fluke Point, Canada

(images via: National Geographic, Lighthouse Friends and Robert Williams Photography)

The Grand Harbour Lighthouse and attached keeper’s house at Fish Fluke Point on Ross Island, New Brunswick, Canada has been in a state of slow-motion collapse since 1963 when the station was closed. The once-picturesque lighthouse’s degeneration was accelerated by the great Groundhog Day Gale of 1976 but though it may make an excellent setting for a horror movie the lighthouse itself refuses to implode.

(image via: Swallowtail Keeper’s Society)

Opened in the fall of 1879, the Grand Harbour Lighthouse was a low-budget affair from the get-go: one of the early keepers was issued a hand-operated foghorn to be used as required. Cheap or not, the wood-framed complex has lasted longer than many stone structures of similar age. At this point it’ll take a superstorm of, say, Sandy-like intensity to finally knock its lights out for good.

Klein Curacao Lighthouse, Curacao

(images via: Curacao-TravelGuide.com, Debi van Zyl and Foter)

The Caribbean island of Curacao bore witness to the golden age of exploration, pirates, treasure-ships and more – and it’s got plenty of shipwrecks to prove it. In 1850 a lighthouse was constructed on the tiny, (3 km2 or 1.2 square mile) island of Klein Curacao situated 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) south-east of the mother island.

(image via: Gordon_C)

In 1877 a powerful hurricane destroyed the original lighthouse and in 1879 a stronger replacement was built. This lighthouse was subsequently storm-damaged and repaired again in 1913. Though the lighthouse had been abandoned decades ago and had been left to decay, the light itself was recently reactivated and an automatic solar-powered LED beacon was installed.

Waugoshance Light, Michigan, USA

(images via: Waugoshance Lighthouse Preservation Society and Beaver Island Jewelry)

Not all lighthouses stand on the seashore; lakes need lighthouses too! Especially great lakes like, er, the Great Lakes where shipping (and shipwrecks) have been commonplace for several centuries. Take the late, great Waugoshance Light for instance. Built in 1851 to replace a lightship guiding ships through a treacherous area of the Straits of Mackinac, the Waugoshance Light was the first Great Lakes lighthouse to be surrounded on water on all sides.

(image via: Divemi)

The Waugoshance Light was built of brick and covered with iron plating – built to last, it was. Unfortunately, the creation of deeper draft ships that had to use the Gray’s Reef passage saw the building of the White Shoal Light and the Grays Reef Light. The Waugoshance Light was decommissioned in 1912 and was used as a gunnery target by the U.S. Navy during World War II. That anything still remains of this rugged feat of engineering after more than 160 years is remarkable to say the least.

Mogadishu Lighthouse, Somalia

(images via: Dissident Nation and National Geographic)

Though shattered by two decades of on & off civil war, the Somali city of Mogadishu has a long and prosperous history based on sea trading. The country’s network of ports appealed to Italian colonizers during the latter quarter of the 19th century and with the establishment of Italian Somaliland extensive infrastructure was built. One of the outstanding and surviving examples is the Mogadishu Lighthouse, or the ruins thereof.

(image via: Frankkeillor)

Its light long dimmed and its open spiral staircase on the verge of collapse, the lighthouse serves these days as a shady retreat for fishermen, gamblers and partakers of the aromatic stimulant shrub called qat.

Rubjerg-Knude Fyr, Denmark

(images via: Environmental Graffiti/Anders Hollenbo, CIB W78 and ForoCoches)

When the Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse in Jutland, Denmark first fired up its lamp on December 27th of 1900, its builders were confident its location atop Lønstrup Klint 60 meters (200ft) above sea level would keep it out of the reach of windblown sand dunes that had made any seaside construction untenable. Though in time the dunes would not be denied, it would take almost 70 years for the lighthouse to be rendered inoperable and a further 35 for all the buildings in the complex to be abandoned altogether.

(image via: Mariorei)

One might think a lighthouse nearly subsumed by sand dunes would be located in the Middle East, North Africa, basically anywhere but Denmark! Live & learn, constant readers and potential lighthouse builders. It’s somewhat ironic a lighthouse constructed to help those who sail the waves would be wrecked by windblown waves of sand.

Great Isaac Cay Lighthouse, the Bahamas

(images via: Megali.ST, FKA, Tony Arruza Photography and Joyous!))

The Great Isaac Cay Lighthouse was built in 1859 on tiny Great Isaac Cay in the Bahamas. The 152ft-tall tower is surrounded by a small group of decrepit and decaying outbuildings abandoned after the lighthouse’s last two keepers mysteriously vanished in 1969.

(image via: Artificial Owl)

The lighthouse still functions using an automatic lighting mechanism as it is still needed as a navigational aid. That’s just as well – the lighthouse has acquired a reputation for being haunted by the ghosts of shipwrecked ship passengers. It’s said that when the full moon shines, the spectral shades of a mother and child shipwrecked off the island in the late 19th century can be heard bemoaning their fate.

(image via: Michael John Grist)

The first to go were the keepers, made redundant by automated power generators. Next were the lighthouses themselves, relegated to superfluousness when GPS navigation offered ship captains accurate positioning any time of day, whatever the weather. Often built in isolated locations beset by the harshest of environments, these relics of a more romantic age are gradually giving up the ghost, ravaged by the same seas they sought to make safer for sailors. Last one to leave, please shut the door and turn out the light.

Though lighthouses have captured much of the glory when it comes to seacoasts, shorelines and shipwrecks, their usefulness quickly fades when thick mists and pea-soup fogs roll in. At times like these, lighthouses hand the torch to their less glamorous but no less essential aural counterparts: foghorns. And to that we say, “Hear here!”

Shore Sounds Good!

(images via: New-Brunswick.net and Lighthouse Friends)

Foghorns have been sounding off since 1859 when a steam-powered “fog alarm” invented by Robert Foulis began operations on Partridge Island, New Brunswick, Canada. In one form or another, the Partridge Island foghorn (shown above in a watercolor sketch from 1865) continued to sound out a mournful moan to wayward mariners for 139 years, until it was finally switched off on May 4th, 1998.

(images via: SPPS, BSmif and Anchor Brewing)

Robert Foulis supposedly got the idea for a low-frequency fog alarm one misty night while listening to his daughter play the piano. He noticed something curious: the lower notes carried further and sounded louder than the higher notes. Foulis’ first fog alarm not only blasted out loud low tones, it was automated and could be set up to play different coded cadences so that sailors could determine which location they were nearing. Most steam-powered foghorns use coal to heat their boilers. You can see the incoming coal chute (above right) leading down into the boiler building of the Point Reyes foghorn.

Foghorns Of Plenty

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(images via: Terry Pepper, Night Whispers, Kosmix and Wikipedia)

The next technological leap in foghorn design came in the late 1890s when English pipe organ designer Robert Hope-Jones rigged his Wurlitzer organ to produce what he called a “diaphonic” tone. Hope-Jones’ diaphone was further refined by Canadian John Pell Northey, who added a secondary air supply that resulted in the full, rich, two-tone foghorn that remains the benchmark for foghorns over a century later.

Split Rock Music

(images via: MBillings_7, PedalFreak and RSH3339)

Split Rock Lighthouse has been guarding the north shore of Lake Superior southwest of Silver Bay, Minnesota, since 1910. A pair of diaphone foghorns were mounted on a separate building (above). Originally powered by a gasoline engine and an associated air compressor, the foghorns were switched over to electric power in 1940 and sounded their last blast in 1961.

The Sound Of Silence

(images via: Fair Isle and Manx.net)

What could be lonelier than the sound of a foghorn? How about a silenced foghorn, which are becoming more and more common as time passes. The days when ship captains aboard sailing ships becalmed in mist cupped their ears and listened intently for the call of the foghorn are long gone. Today’s ships hum with the throb of diesel engines and captains fix their positions via radar and GPS systems. Mighty foghorns such as the one above, located on the Langness peninsula on the Isle of Man, are left to the mercy of the wind, rain and corrosive salt spray.

(images via: Neepdocker and Manx.net)

Some of the loneliest and at the same time, most scenically spectacular foghorns are located on the Scottish isle of Ailsa Craig. Now uninhabited and a designated bird sanctuary, Ailsa Craig and its huge foghorns have been silent since 1966.

(images via: Wikipedia, NLB and SeaKayakPhoto)

The massive foghorns located on the island’s north and south coasts were supplied with air from now-rusting compressed air tanks, kept full via now-ruined gasworks. Ailsa Craig was extensively quarried for its unique blue-gray granite, used to make curling stones. Blasting is now forbidden but loose rock is still mined to make the famous Scottish “rocks.”

Still Hear

(images via: Racerocks, James Jegers and BBC Radio)

Though not as common as they once were, there is still a need for foghorns in many parts of the world. As well, technology has given foghorns a new lease on life. Equipped with laser generators and computer operating software, modern marvels like the white beauty (above left) from Maine, USA, shine a beam of light into the mist and should the fog reflect back a significant quantity of light, the electric foghorn will sound.

(image via: Biking Birder 2010)

Modern or not, foghorns’ claim to fame remains their loud and penetrating sound designed to be heard and heeded from many miles away. One hopes the gentleman above, at Scotland’s Mull of Galloway lighthouse’s foghorn, has remembered to wear his earplugs.

You’ll Be Mist

(images via: Indospectrum and Excel Math)

Just as the inclement weather they’re designed to warn against relentless batters them, foghorns seem to endure though some have been silent for many decades. Part of this is due to their isolation: their residual scrap value isn’t worth the time and trouble to retrieve them from islands, points and peninsulas.

(images via: Flickr/Splitrock and Fotolibra)

Not that their presence harms anyone or anything – in fact, the evocative nature of foghorns makes them a favored subject for painters and photographers.

(image via: Essex Explorations)

That a man-made device built to emit sound can appeal to our visual and emotional centers is something worth appreciating… even, if I dare say, worth blowing your horn about.