In August of 1915, Mario Vergara, a journalist with the Chilean monthly Pacifico Magazine, undertook a cruise from Port Stanley to Valparaiso aboard the SS Orcoma, an 18,000t passenger liner owned by the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, to ‘admire the great work carried out by our government’ in lighting up the Strait of Magellan for transoceanic shipping. In ‘Nuestros Faros’, an article published the following February, the correspondent listed more than a dozen lighthouses and light buoys that had helped guide the ship safely through potentially ‘hundreds of dangers in the darkness of the night’.
The author included a chronology of many of the other lighthouses built along Chile’s 4,000km of treacherous coastline over the previous half century, from Iquique in the north to Punta Arenas in the south. Vergara could be rightly proud of his country’s progress in lighting up its coasts for the safety of seafarers. However, the man responsible for the construction of as many as 70 of these modern lighthouses, including almost all of those located along the sea route Vergara had taken, was given only the scantest acknowledgment. These pages will spotlight Scottish engineer George Slight – the man who lit the Strait of Magellan.
George Henry Slight was born on 30th September 1859, and spent his formative years in Edinburgh. That George would make his name in lighthouse engineering is not entirely surprising as his family had a connection with the famous Stevenson family. His grandfather James Slight (1786-1854) and his great-uncle Alexander had both toiled on the Bell Rock Lighthouse, constructed by Robert Stevenson between 1807-10. By 1829, James had risen to the position of Clerk of Works of the Northern Lighthouse Board. George followed his grandfather and father, also named George (b. 1822), into the engineering profession. Part of George Sr’s career had been spent developing rotation systems and light emission sequences for use in lighthouses. However, George Jr’s first employment following the completion of his apprenticeship was aboard the steamships that served the route between Britain and India, although his exact role is unclear. By the 1880s, he was in the pay of Trinity House, the organisation charged with building and maintaining lighthouses in England and Wales.
George Slight was not the first Scotsman to make a major contribution to the development of Chile. During the region’s liberation struggle against Spain, General José de San Martín had hired the services of disgraced former naval officer and parliamentarian Lord Thomas Cochrane to lead his fledgling naval forces. Born in Lanarkshire to members of the Scottish aristocracy, Cochrane had earned his spurs during the Napoleonic Wars, his most famous action being at the Battle of the Basque Roads, which had made him a national hero. However, his naval career was seriously damaged after he’d indirectly questioned the competence of his commanding officer, Lord Gambier (who’d been exonerated at a subsequent court martial). Simultaneously, Cochrane’s political career had been brought to an ignominious end after being found guilty of stock exchange fraud. Eager to rebuild his reputation and his finances abroad, Cochrane had reached Valparaiso in 1817, where he’d been appointed vice-admiral of the incipient Chilean fleet. Cochrane’s most famous exploits were the capture of the port of Valdivia from royalist forces, and the cutting out of the Esmeralda, Spanish Viceroyalty’s most powerful warship while moored at Callao. He was also instrumental in San Martin’s successful invasion of Peru [1].
In the decades following its independence, Chilean trade with North America and Europe grew rapidly, and its southern ports were important stopovers for ships passing through the Strait of Magellan or ‘rounding the Horn’. In addition to being a significant commercial port, Valparaíso was also home to the Chilean navy, and between 1829 and 1837 the base of operations for the Royal Navy’s ‘South American Station’. By the 1840s, Chile’s coastal trade was being monopolised by the Pacific Steam Navigation Company (PSNC), a British company set up by the American entrepreneur William Wheelwright.
The growth of sea trade led to a pressing need for navigational aids. Up to that point, the country’s only lighthouse was a pyramidal wooden structure erected at the entrance to Valparaíso in 1837 [2]. The dangers of Chile’s 4,000km long coastline, even to powered vessels, was fully realised on 30th January 1856, when the Cazador, a Chilean paddle troop transport on her way to Valparaíso from Talcahuano hit a reef off Cabo Carranza, some miles south of the port of Constitución. At least 300 of those aboard perished as she foundered in darkness, the greatest loss of life from a single incident in the nation’s history. This loss, following that of the new PSNC steamer SS Quito in 1852 [3], undoubtedly contributed to the Chilean government’s determination to begin lighting its coast.
Chile’s first permanent lighthouses were the work of Enrique Siemsen (1815-1875), a Danish engineer who’d arrived in Valparaíso in 1852. His first commission was to replace the lighthouse built by Delano. A new stone structure was erected at Punta Angeles on the northeast side of the rocky headland that protects Valparaíso Bay. Lit in 1857, El Faro de Punta Angeles remains the country’s most famous lighthouse even though Siemen’s original structure was destroyed in the 1906 Valparaíso Earthquake. The Dane oversaw at least five other early lighthouses built between 1859 and 1869, the northernmost at Caldera (Atacama Region) and the furthest south at Punta Corona (Los Lagos). Siemsen’s original square, stone edifice at Caldera is still extant.
Chilean lighthouse building evidently stalled in the 1870s. However, Vergara’s article lists half a dozen other lights that were completed in the 1880s and early 1890s [4]. This renewed building activity coincided with the establishment of the country’s first centralised lighthouse service, headed by Chilean navy captain Don Navio Molina, in 1887. However, at least some of these early lights were non-permanent structures built of wood, and most were reliant on inferior rapeseed oil – ‘aceite de colza’ – for their illumination.
Despite the best efforts of these early lighthouse engineers, the latter half of the 19th century saw a string of further shipwrecks along Chile’s treacherous coast, along which lie thousands of rocky islets. At least a dozen of these wrecks involved ships operated by the PSNC, including the sister-ships Atacama and Eten, destroyed within three months of one another in 1877 with heavy loss of life. Cabo Carranza continued to be a navigational black-spot, the steamer John Elder striking rocks and sinking there in 1892, although thankfully without casualties [5].
Moreover, most of the Chilean littoral, including the Strait of Magellan remained entirely unlit. First navigated by Ferdinand Magellan’s ill-starred expedition in 1520, ‘El Estrecho de Magallanes’ was the favoured route for steamships passing from the Atlantic into the Pacific, being more sheltered from the elements than the tumultuous Drake Passage, and considerably shorter in distance. Nevertheless, though comprehensively surveyed and charted by the British between 1826-1830, the 350-mile-long Strait still presented a serious navigational hazard to 19th century shipping, even vessels under steam; for it is not a single channel but a maze of waterways which vary greatly in breadth and depth. It contains numerous islets and hidden reefs, and is subject to gales and williwaws, extreme tides and strong currents.
Chile had assumed de facto sovereignty of the Strait in the early 1840s, a defensive settlement being built at Fort Bulmes in 1843. This was later abandoned for the more suitable location at Punta Arenas. The first steamships to pass through the Strait had been the PNSC tugs Chile and Peru in 1840. The company initially planned a towing service for sailing ships, whose passage remained particularly slow and hazardous; however, this plan was soon abandoned as impractical. Traffic increased significantly in the late 1860s with the PSNC’s introduction of a regular service between Liverpool and Valparaíso, and by the end of the 19th century, two vessels were porting at Punta Arenas every day. Nevertheless, the vagaries of the Strait, especially at its points of egress meant that it remained perilous to navigate in rough weather. This was exemplified by the loss of the PSNC paddle-steamer Santiago in January 1869 after running aground on an uncharted rock near the western entrance, two sailors and a child being killed [6]. In 1885, after a dispute with Argentina over ownership of the Strait had been formally settled, a small wooden lighthouse was erected lighting the entrance to Punta Arenas, but the rest of the Strait lacked still any form of mechanical illumination.
[1] Cochrane’s contribution to the Republic was recognised in his name subsequently being given to five Chilean warships.
[2] This had evidently been designed by then ‘Captain of the Port’ Paul Delano. Born in Massachusetts, Delano had served with distinction under Cochrane in the Chilean navy during the liberation struggle.
[3] The ship had been wrecked near Huasco, a port in Atacama then part of Peru but ceded to Chile at the end of the War of the Pacific in 1883.
[4] As a result of its victory in the War of the Pacific, Chile also took possession of several Peruvian lighthouses in the Atacama region. These included El Faro Serrano, constructed in 1878 by the French company Barnier & Fenestre.
[5] The name of this ship commemorated the owner of the Clyde shipyard where several of the PSNC’s own steamers had been constructed.
[6] This was the second loss for the PSNC that month. Days earlier, the Arica had been wrecked on the coast of Peru.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 