Text 1: The lighthouse with nobody home, by Imogen Saleh

An original contemporary newspaper feature.

The lighthouse appears first as a white scratch on the horizon. Forty minutes later, our boat is still rising and dropping on the waves, and the scratch has become a tower planted on a black tooth of rock. There is no harbour. There is only a ladder, green with weed, which vanishes beneath the water each time the boat sinks into a trough.

‘Wait for the high point, then step across,’ says Asha Morgan, the senior maintenance technician. She says this as casually as if we are getting off a bus. Asha has made the crossing dozens of times. I have made it no times at all.

The lighthouse has been automated for nearly thirty years, so nobody lives here now. Twice a year, Asha and two other technicians arrive to test every system and repair whatever the Atlantic has damaged. Inside, she checks the emergency batteries, cleans salt from the electrical contacts and examines the solar panels through binoculars. A red stain on one bolt earns a frown. ‘Rust never takes a day off,’ she says, replacing it.

At the top of the tower, the lamp is smaller than I expected: a circle of powerful lights no wider than a dinner plate. Asha covers a sensor to make darkness fall early. Instantly, the lamp flashes and the great glass lens throws a blade of white across the daylight. She watches in silence, counting the intervals on her fingers. Only when the sequence is correct does she smile.

The work requires the patience to inspect hundreds of ordinary components and the judgement to recognise the one that is about to fail. Asha also has to improvise. A cable has been rubbed bare against its metal bracket, so she cuts a protective sleeve to fit it. The nearest replacement part is on the mainland, and the weather may prevent another landing for weeks.

By mid-afternoon, the wind has strengthened. The tower gives no sign of it, but spray strikes the windows like handfuls of gravel. Asha ends the inspection early. Her decision is brisk and unquestioned: the most dangerous part of the job is not repairing the light but getting back to the boat.

As we pull away, the tower is empty once more. At sunset it begins flashing behind us, performing its one task with such certainty that nobody watching from the coast would guess how much careful human work made that certainty possible.

Text 2: Three days upon the Gull Rock, by Josiah Penrose

An original magazine article written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this magazine article, written in 1878, a writer describes a visit to an offshore lighthouse where two keepers live and work.

We reached the Gull Rock by the keeper’s little boat, whose movements persuaded me that the sea had mistaken us for a plaything. Mr Preece, the principal keeper, seized my arm as I came up the landing steps and set me safely upon the rock. He then rescued my case with rather more tenderness.

The two keepers inhabit three circular rooms, one above another, and conduct their lives with an order that would shame many a grand household. Their boots stand exactly together; every pan shines; not a grain of salt is permitted to remain upon the stairs. This cleanliness is not for comfort alone. ‘Dirt on the glass dims the light,’ Mr Preece told me, ‘and a dim light may cost a ship.’

An hour before sunset, the labour of the night begins. The keepers carry oil to the lantern room, trim the wicks and polish the great arrangement of glass until it glitters like a palace made for a flame. Then Mr Evans winds the machinery which turns the lamp. The heavy handle rises slowly, and he bends over it with both hands, as though lifting a stubborn gate.

Once lit, the lamp must not be left unwatched. Through the night, the men take turns to inspect the flame and wind the mechanism before its weights reach the floor. In fog, sleep is abandoned altogether. The bell must be sounded at its proper interval, hour after hour, while the white wall of vapour presses against the windows.

I had imagined the keepers passing empty days with the gulls. Instead, every hour had its duty: recording the weather, cleaning the lens, painting ironwork, repairing ropes and carrying stores from the boat. The sea governs all. Provisions may be delayed by a storm, and once, Mr Preece said, no boat reached them for five weeks. He mentioned this not as a complaint but as one might mention a long winter.

On my final night, I stood below the lantern while the keepers moved through their practised routine. Few ships were visible, yet the light swept over the darkness again and again. The men would never know the names of those who saw it. Their reward was simply that, by morning, the sea had claimed no vessel within sight of the tower.

Both of these texts are about visits to an offshore lighthouse.

Compare:

• what the writers say about the work needed to keep the lighthouse operating
• how the writers present the people responsible for the light

You must use the text to support your comments and make it clear which text you are referring to.