In the summer, he picks wild mushrooms and asparagus in a nearby pine forest and in the spring, he plants tomatoes, basil, beans and “whatever the seagulls don’t eat” in a small garden by the lighthouse’s front door. At night, he paints watercolour seascapes and plays guitar on the cots in the empty rooms where the other keepers once lived.Įach autumn, he looks for the bottlenose dolphins and sperm whales that appear offshore. In the evenings, he writes poems about the ocean, its fishermen and the constellations. These days, when he’s not fixing electrical issues, communicating with the Coast Guard and emptying buckets of seawater from the stairwell, D’Oriano listens to classical music and reads plays by Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello in the lantern room. When they retired in 2009, their positions closed with them, leaving D’Oriano to keep the 1,000-watt light, maintain the grounds and pass the time all alone. They used to take turns going up and down the tower, shared a kitchen and tiny bathroom together and played cards together outside as the beams quietly flashed through the night. When D’Oriano arrived at the lighthouse, two older guardians shared the small keepers quarters below the tower with him. Only someone who lives in solitude can understand this.” It reminds you that nature exists and that this mass of water is open and alive. “But over the years, I’ve learned that an angry sea is more beautiful than a quiet sea. “At first, I thought these tremors were small earthquakes,” D’Oriano remembered, flipping through old diaries in his office. Pounding storms frequently brought waves 25m up to his bedroom window, and gale-force winds caused the lighthouse tower to shake and sway. The base and spiral staircase were built with lava stone from Mt Vesuvius the tower is painted Pompeian red and, fittingly, the whole thing looks like it could be buried by a wave and swept out to sea at any moment.ĭ’Oriano didn’t sleep much his first few months on duty. Its rotating optical lens is the second most powerful in Italy, and its flashing beams stretch 25 nautical miles through one of the country’s busiest shipping lanes. Rising 28m atop a narrow limestone bluff that plunges into the ocean, Punta Carena casts a striking image. But when I did, it was love at first sight.” “I hadn’t even seen a picture of the place.
“I didn’t know the first thing about working in a lighthouse,” D’Oriano admitted. Then in 2005, a navy commander tipped him off that a rare position was opening at Punta Carena, and that his decades of experience as a nautical technician, harbour pilot and sailor would make him a good fit. “I guess I’m the lucky one,” D’Oriano said, wiping the salt from Punta Carena’s storm windows.ĭ’Oriano joined the navy in 1975 and was stationed up and down the Italian coast for the next 30 years.
Yet despite not hiring a single new lighthouse keeper from outside the military since 1987, the captain of Italy’s Lighthouse Authority, Antonello D’Esposito, told me that they still receive roughly 5,000 applications every year for a position that no longer exists. “The reality is, in 10 years, this job will be extinct.” “There can’t be more than about 200 left in the world,” said Ian Duff, president of the international Association of Lighthouse Keepers, who himself kept the light shining at Skerryvore, Duncansby Head and Tiree Island in Scotland for nearly two decades before being made redundant in 1992.
One stalwart sentinel remains in South Africa three in France a handful in India, Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Portugal and fewer than 50 in Canada. Australia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway and many other nations no longer employ a single operator. The UK’s last custodian left his post at the North Foreland Lighthouse in Kent in 1998 – the same year, the US Coast Guard automated the last of its 279 federally run beacons. In fact, with the exception of seasonal volunteers and educational guides, there are hardly any lighthouse keepers left on the planet.
Wood pyres evolved into coal, gas, oil and electricity, and today, according to The Lighthouse Directory, more than 20,500 of these enduring landmarks still illuminate the world’s darkest and most dangerous stretches of coastline.īut as marine navigation tools and satellite automation have become more sophisticated, the need for lighthouses and their human operators has been virtually snuffed out. Around 280BC, these ground-lit beacons were raised onto towers, like the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Thousands of years ago, people lit bonfires high atop cliffs to guide sailors to port. “This work is beautiful, but it’s dying.”Īs long as there have been ships, there have been light keepers. “Think about how many keepers have lived inside these walls, always keeping the light on to guide others,” D’Oriano said, gazing out from the lantern room towards the twilight.
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