Page 9 - KBHA BULLETIN 6

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The building work was completed in January 1860 but excluded living quarters for the

lighthouse-keepers. Because Gordon had not visited the site and was unfamiliar with the

problems of the terrain, his plans for these quarters could not be carried out and a cottage
was constructed about seventy metres from the lighthouse.

Because of the delays regarding the positioning of the site, as well as delays at Roman

Rock and differences between Cousins and King, King was dismissed The lighthouse
started operating on 1 May 1860. The lighting equipment comprised four sets of four one-

wick burners giving a twelve second flash every minute. The first lighthouse-keeper was

James Coe who had been the light-keeper on the lightship at Roman Rock, which had
proved to be unsatisfactory.

In 1868 an article appeared in Charles Dickens' weekly journal, All the Year Round, which
described a journey and visit by two civil engineers in 1860 to Cape Point lighthouse.

Extracts are presented below.

THE CAPE OF STORMS

The pull up the steep rock was hot work, there being no path but such as had been made by
water torrents, and furrows worn by the constructors of the lighthouse when they dragged
up their materials. But this they did chiefly by hoisting the heavy iron plates from one ledge
to the one above by ropes and pulleys. Owing to this difficulty and the absence of all roads,
the expense of conveying these materials from Simon's Bay - a distance of forty-two miles
- considerably exceeded the whole cost of bringing them from the manufactory in England
to the sea port, and thence by ship to the Cape.

The lighthouse keeper was out on the rock watching our toilsome ascent through a long
ship's glass. A strong pull, a final breathless desperate struggle, and we stand, hot, heaving,
panting, and perspiring, at the southernmost point of Africa; the actual "Cape of Storms"
enchanted ground. For is it not the very home, castle-keep, of the dread Flying Dutchman?
No longer a solitary storm-lashed rock "far from humanity's reach," the meddling British
engineer has annexed it, and supplies it with elliptic lenses, argand lamps, plate-glass, and
colza oil.

The lighthouse is built on a small plateau at the summit of the rock, partly natural, chiefly
levelled by art. There may be perhaps thirty foot of level space in front of the house, and
then abruptly, plumb, without a foot of incline, the rock, many hundreds of feet deep, drops
into the sea. The water for a mile or two round is studded with sunken rocks, sharp as

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