Sunday, June 29, 2014

Lighthouse of the Week, June 29-July 5, 2014: Calcanhar


In honor of the World Cup being played in Brazil, I decided to look at Brazil lighthouses.  Brazil obviously has a lot of coastline, and it turns out it has a lot of lighthouses, too.  But one immediately caught my eye, the black-and-white striped Calcanhar (also called Touros).  Here's some info about it:

1943 (station established 1912). Active; focal plane 74 m (243 ft); white flash every 10 s. 62 m (203 ft) round cylindrical concrete tower with four ribs and lantern, painted with black and white horizontal bands.  

This great lighthouse deserves to be better known: it is Brazil's tallest traditional lighthouse and one of the tallest concrete lighthouses in the world. It marks a headland near the northern end of the great curve of the Cabo de São Roque, the northeastern shoulder of South America. The  first lighthouse was replaced by a 52 m (171 ft) cast iron tower in 1927.






No comments: