Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Lighthouse of the Week, November 27 - December 3, 2016: Trowbridge Island, Canada



It's fairly easy to find lighthouses in the United States on the great lake of Lake Superior. There are lesser-known and harder-to-find lighthouses on the Canadian side. A good example of why they are harder to find is found with the Trowbridge Lighthouse, at the southern end of the Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

The Trowbridge light sticks out above the trees, and has a dramatic stone wall backdrop (that's the Sleeping Giant), so it does lend itself well to pictures, even though it's hard to see the entire lighthouse building, which is only 39 feet tall.

Specs as of 1923, from Lighthouse Friends: "A thirty-nine-foot-tall octagonal tower, built of reinforced concrete and topped by a red lantern room, was placed on the summit of the island. Inside the lantern room, a third-order, Chance Brothers Fresnel lens slowly revolved around an oil-vapour lamp, producing a white flash every five seconds at a height of 114 above the lake. When needed, the fog alarm would boom out a group of two blasts each minute in this manner: two-and- a-half-second blast, ten seconds of silence, two-and-a-half-second blast, forty-five seconds of silence. The characteristic of the fog alarm was changed in 1928 to sound two three- and-a-quarter-second blasts each minute."

From the Lighthouse Directory: "Active; focal plane 35 m (114 ft); white flash every 5 s. 7 m (23 ft) octagonal concrete tower with lantern and gallery, painted white with red trim; lantern and gallery painted red. 3rd order Fresnel lens."

So apparently it still has a working Fresnel lens. Cool.

Web site with a map

Pictures, including the Sleeping Giant itself (in the top one, the rock walls of the Sleeping Giant can be glimpsed at far left).




















This is the Sleeping Giant

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