Graham Hall on Navigation

The Nab Tower provided a totally different situation. You could get close to the Nab Tower, there’s no rocks around there or anything like that and it was a man-made structure, but the seas used to break around it and you couldn’t always get to the base to get people on and off. It was quite a big tower, the Nab.

During my time there the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works refitted it inside there for … because Trinity House only rented the top two floors. They refitted the inside there and they put in great galleys and bedrooms and all sorts of things there.

They were never used but they were all nicely fitted out with Formica kitchens and all the rest of it and the idea being that it was a Listening Station for cables during hostilities which never obviously came so it was available for that.

It obviously fell into disrepair and the whole top of it has now been knocked down and it’s just a little light sort above the base but it did replace the Light Vessel that was there, the Nab Light Vessel which was, you know, very useful because Light Vessels do have their problems and permanent structures like that are far more reliable. You know their position’s not going to change overnight or anything like that. They are what they are. They’re there and they only needed, in those days, a crew of three to man them whereas a Light Vessel had far more people on board.