BBC Documentaries

The Northern Lights (1969x6)

Air date: Jun 10, 1969

For the Safety of All. There are seventy-two manned lighthouses around the Scottish coast and it takes a vast and complex organisation to administer them. The isolated rock stations are serviced by four ships. These ships are crewed by seamen who know every rock in the gullies which are the hazardous landing places. This documentary is a story of storm and danger-and a story of lonely living. The Northern Lights followed the Pole Star, a Northern Lighthouse Board relief vessel and her crew as she serviced some of Scotland's most remote and inaccessible lighthouses. Although the Northern Lighthouse Board had begun the process of automation by then, several manned lighthouses remained and the crew of the Pole Star had the crucial role of taking relief crews and supplies to these lighthouses. In this programme, the Pole Star visits the Sule Skerry and North Ronaldsay Lighthouses in Orkney as well as the mysterious Flannan Isles Lighthouse where three lighthouse keepers disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 1900. Narrated by Tom Fleming