Trinity House

When I was a teenager, I spent a tiny bit of time at sea on a working ship. The gig was finagled for me by an old boyfriend of my mother. Note the passive tense: I did essentially nothing to make this happen. Nowadays, there is a whole industry mapping out Gap Years for privileged youth so they can get into the socially preferred colleges and universities. One week as a supernumerary 'working' for Trinity House was plenty enough to convince me that actually working at sea would be a long old way outside my comfort zone. Trinity House* are / were responsible for maintaining and operating lighthouses, lightships and buoys round the coast of Great Britain. The Commissioners of Irish Lights = CIL = Coimisinéirí Soilse na hÉireann does the equivalent work for the island of Ireland. While in England recently, I idly picked up a copy of Granta 61: The Sea - Voyages, Mysteries, Discoveries, Disasters 1998, like all Grantas there were a number of interesting pieces inside. Including one about…