I'm aware that there are still many more lighthouses around the Great Lakes and Europe that I can feature as Lighthouses of the Week, but I'm still looking around exotic and far-flung locales, too. And this week (actually last week, but who's paying attention to that, really?), I found a famous and quite handsome lighthouse on the island of Tahiti.
It's called the Point Venus lighthouse, and I'm going to give full credit to the Lighthouse Directory (Lighthouses of French Polynesia) for this information.
"1868 (restored and extended in 1963). Active; focal plane 31 m (102 ft); white flash every 5 s. 33 m (108 ft) square tower with six stepped stories below the watch room and gallery. Lighthouse painted white with gray trim.
Designed in France on the recommendations of the lighthouse engineer Léonce Reynaud, it resembles several French lighthouses of the early 1860s such as the Pointe de la Grave lighthouse at the mouth of the Gironde (see the Aquitaine page). The Fresnel lens, manufactured by Sautter & Cie., arrived in Tahiti in 1865. The tower was built during 1866-67 under the direction of Captain Gustave de la Taille, a French Army officer and civil engineer. It was completed in 1867 but not placed into service until New Years Day 1868. The confusion about this history was created by the author Robert Louis Stevenson, who visited Tahiti and the lighthouse in 1888 before settling in Samoa. In his account of his travels he claimed that the lighthouse was designed by his father, the well-known Scottish lighthouse engineer Thomas Stevenson. There is a plaque on the lighthouse that repeats this claim. No one knows why the younger Stevenson told this story (or whether he believed it himself), but it is completely false.In more modern times this beautiful lighthouse was refurbished and raised in height by 7 m (23 ft) in 1963."
Below, pictures and a stamp, and below them, a video.
And here is a superb video, including a great view of the Fresnel lens.
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