Archives



Feature, Sea


A good deed shines bright

[ November 9, 2017   //   ]

When the 1950s-vintage illuminated cross on the tower of Christ Church in the Southampton district of Freemantle finally gave up the ghost, the vicar probably didn’t give much thought to its effect on shipping.

However, while today’s generation of ultra large container ships use all manner of hi-tech electronic positioning equipment to get into the docks, Pilots still verify the ship’s position and progress by the time-honoured practice of looking at fixed objects ashore – and one of those objects was Christ Church’s bright white cross.

A quick call by Marine Pilot Mark Bray to the Reverend Angi Nutt revealed that the cross had been unlit after the final tube in it failed, and that it was a “tricky and often eventful project” to lower it to change the bulbs and do maintenance work on it, ” she said.

Port apprentice Morgan Rodaway was quickly given the task of stripping back the 2.2m high cross and fitting LED bulbs with photocell technology so the cross lights up as darkness falls and then joined maintenance team colleagues who used a cherry picker to safely re-attach the cross at a height of 18m.

Tags: ,