Other Buildings as Navigational Aids

You might consider a church steeple or any other prominent building to be a navigational aid, for if it can easily be recognised from the sea then it assists the mariner in knowing his location. Indeed, such landmarks are shown explicitly on marine charts, and in texts known as coastal pilots, that are popular with sailors today. While these structures were not built specifically to act as navigational aids, they may have been given a light so that they could serve as an autonomous light or as a rear leading light.

The St Phillips Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, was listed in some international and national lists at the turn of the twentieth century, but is not included in official lists of lights today. However, some lights of this type are officially listed today. In the ALL, Beauvoir (G1139) is a church in Argentina, as are Puerto Bolivar (G3029) in Ecuador and Kihelkonna Rear (C3715.1) in Estonia, for example.

In addition to churches, other buildings have been used in this way. The Hibernia Bank building in New Orleans was listed for a few years after WWI, and actually had a lantern on its roof. The Kingsborough Community College in the New York City area is still listed by the US Coast Guard. The Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, also in NYC, was listed from 1913 to 1967 [11] when it was located at the Seamen’s Institute – it is now at the South Street Seaport.

Other structures that act as aids to navigation are bridges with lights to mark a channel into a harbour, or in a river, as well as offshore oil and gas production platforms in the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Arabian Sea, for example. Among the more unusual structures listed is H0026, a light shown from the top of a grain elevator in Churchill, Manitoba.

© 2003 Ken Trethewey