Situated on a tiny, exposed skerry 28 miles beyond Land's End in the Isles of Scilly, the Bishop Rock Lighthouse is the last physical light one typically sees when leaving Great Britain by sea on a westward course, with nothing but open ocean stretching for thousands of miles beyond it.
For that reason alone, it should deserve a mention in José Luis González Macías' book "A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World", but it doesn't. I had to resort to YouTube to find out more about it:
Bishop Rock was automated in 1992, with the last lighthousekeeper leaving on December 21, 1992. A typical crew consisted of three men (one principal keeper and two assistant keepers) who shared round-the-clock watch schedules, including a midnight to 4 am 'graveyard watch', followed by 4-hour shifts. Theirs was a 56-hour work week for six weeks, though sometimes much longer if severe weather delayed crew relief.
So what did a lifehousekeeper read in his tiny bunk just before going off to sleep? Barry Wynne's book "The Man Who Refused To Die", of course!
And what became of the principal keeper and the two assistant keepers after their jobs were automated? Did they all become accountants?
