A moment in time 1082 views at 09/02/2013.

In the Winter of 1999, when I was sailing my small yacht through the Channel Islands and caught in extreme conditions, I was very thankful to the builders of Corbiere Lighthouse.

My graphite pencil drawing is an imaginary scene of a vessel in distress. A vessel which has been thrust upon the vicious rocks with little hope of rescue.
The Corbiere Lighthouse, completed in 1874 in Jersey, Channel Islands was designed and built by Sir John Coode and Imre Bell. Corbiere was the first lighthouse in the British Isles to be built entirely from concrete, rather than traditional stone blocks.
The many lighthouses which are built from stone require complex arrangements of interlocking blocks to prevent the sea from eroding and finally demolishing the structures. Corbière, on the other hand, has withstood the test of the past 130 years without any apparent difficulty.
With a total elevation above the sea of 135 feet and a tower height of 62 feet, Corbière is an imposing building by any standards and has done a stirling job for mariners since the light was first switched on,
Originally, the lantern, which can be seen at a range of 18 miles in good conditions, was fired by paraffin and required the constant attention of keepers who lived in the tower but now the light is automated with electricity.