Fan Lau lighthouse, Lantau Island
Stephen Davies: With the help of Ian Killick at the UK Hydrographic Office Archive, I think I have learned that the Fan Lau Lighthouse would seem to have been first installed in 1936.
Ian did a quick search of a spread of the Admiralty List of Lights, Fog Signals and Visual Time Signals and the 1953 edition gave Fan Lau light as having been installed in that year ie 1936.
Looking through the government records I stumbled on Notices to Mariners No.109/36 of 24th November 1936 that read, “A white flashing light is now being exhibited at the South West point of Lantau Island giving one flash every six seconds.”
HF sourced the images.
Courtesy: wikipedia
Courtesy: The Trigo Man on picasaweb.google.co
This article was first posted on 28th February 2016.
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I have noticed, looking at the lower two images, that they have an important and very singular difference. The upper from Wikipedia has a standard 6th order catoptric lens (or possibly catadioptric (can’t see inside) inside the lantern (that came from the old Blackhead Point light when that was shut down in 1970). However, the lower picture has an empty lantern chamber. The light is a modern LED dioptric light – an interesting throwback, thanks to modern technology, to the earliest days of modern lighthouses and before the invention of the Fresnel lens and, more importantly, of high quality heavy gauge optical glass – when light systems relied almost exclusively on dioptric systems.
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