Trinity House
Trinity House, founded by Royal Charter in 1514, is the General lighthouse authority for England, Wales, the Channel Islands, and Gibraltar. It maintains navigational aids such as lightvessels and buoys, as well as communications services and pilotage for ships in the North Sea. These are financed by dues levied on commercial vessels calling at ports in the British Isles.
In addition, Trinity operates a registered charity, which provides welfare services for retired seamen, education, and promoting safety at sea. Funding for this is generated separately.
History
Trinity House was established as a result of a petition dated 19 March 1513 from a group of mariners based in Deptford, who wanted to regulate pilotage services on the River Thames. On 20 May 1514, Henry VIII granted a Royal Charter to "The Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the most glorious and undivided Trinity, and of St Clement in the Parish of Deptford Strond in the County of Kent."Their general business was listed as "to improve the art and science of mariners; to examine into the qualifications, and regulate the conduct of those who take upon them the charge of conducting ships; to preserve good order, and to compose differences in marine affairs, and, in general, to consult the conservation, good estate, wholesome government, maintenance and increase of navigation and sea-faring men; and to relieve decayed seamen and their relatives."
The further authorised the Corporation to set up and maintain "beacons, marks, and signs for the sea" along the Thames, and in 1594 this was expanded to all public buoys in England.
File:Lightship 'John Sebastien' - geograph.org.uk - 639316.jpg|thumb|left|The John Sebastian, Trinity House L.V. No 55 in Bathurst Basin, Bristol
With the increasing number of ships lost along the Newcastle to London coal route, in 1609 Trinity House established the Lowestoft Lighthouse, a pair of wooden towers with candle illuminants. Until the late 18th century, candle, coal, or wood fires were used as lighthouse illuminants, improved in 1782 with the circular-wick oil-burning Argand lamp, the first ‘catoptric’ mirrored reflector in 1777, and Fresnel’s ‘dioptric’ lens system in 1823. The Nore lightship was established as the world's first floating light in 1732. In 1803, the corporation established the Blackwall Depot as a buoy workshop, and six district depots were later established at Harwich, Great Yarmouth, East Cowes, Penzance, Holyhead and Swansea.
Under the 1836 Lighthouses Act, Trinity became the sole governing body for all British lighthouses, and any remaining private owners bought out. By 1847, revenue collected from this source was £11,000 to £12,000 per year.
During the First World War, the corporation served a number of functions: it buoyed shipping lanes and naval operations, moved lightvessels, and laid hundreds of buoys. During the Second World War, Trinity House kept sea lanes marked and lighted for Allied convoys. The Pilotage Service guided ships to their ports under hazardous conditions; at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, a number of pilots helped in piloting vessels to and from the beaches.
On the night of 29 December 1940, Trinity House was destroyed by the most severe of the air attacks on London; the interiors were completely gutted and many archives and treasures were lost.
In preparation for the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, Trinity House laid 73 lighted buoys and two lightvessels to indicate a safe route for landing craft. Trinity House pilots were responsible for all commercial vessels involved and many of the service vessels. In the month following D-Day, nearly 3,000 vessels were handled by 88 river pilots and nearly 2,000 ships by 115 sea pilots working day and night.
By the 1960s, Trinity House licensed about 500 pilots, of whom about 350 were in the London District, handling an estimated 60% of the nation's piloted tonnage. The Pilotage Act 1987 authorised Trinity House to pass its District Pilotage responsibilities to various local harbour authorities, becoming instead a licensing authority for deep sea pilotage.
In 1969, Trinity House initiated the debut of helicopter reliefs to and from offshore lighthouses, succeeding the boat reliefs. These had been susceptible to being delayed by months during inclement weather. Trinity House played a major part in the design of the IALA Maritime Buoyage System, laying the first buoy off Dover, watched over by representatives of 16 nations on 15 April 1977.
The completion of the lighthouse automation programme came with a ceremony held at the North Foreland Lighthouse on 26 November 1998, attended by the last six keepers and master, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. On 9 June 1989, the last crewed lightvessel was towed from the Channel lightvessel station to Harwich.
In December 2002, Trinity House closed depots at Great Yarmouth, Penzance and East Cowes. Operations are currently run out of Harwich, with a support depot in Swansea and flight operations base at St Just in Penwith. It also has three support vessels, the tenders THV Patricia and THV Galatea, and Rapid Intervention Vessel THV Alert. A small headquarters staff remains at Tower Hill.
Richard Woodman served as elder brethren and member of the court from 2000 until his death in 2024. In 2011, Anne, Princess Royal succeeded her father as Master. She was aboard Trinity House Motor Boat No.1 during the Diamond Jubilee pageant.
In 2014, the Royal Mint issued a two pound coin commemorating the 500th anniversary of the grant of Trinity House's royal charter.
From 2011 to 2024, Ian McNaught, a Merchant Navy Officer served as Deputy Master. In 2024, he was succeeded as Deputy Master and Chief Executive by Rear-Admiral Iain Lower.
Master of the Corporation
The honorary title of Master of the Corporation is currently held by Anne, Princess Royal. Previous Masters include Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Spert, master of the warship Henry Grace à Dieu under Henry VIII; the diarist Samuel Pepys; William Pitt the Younger; Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington; and Admiral Sir William Penn.Other prominent individuals in Britain, often connected with commercial shipping or the Admiralty, have been associated with Trinity House, including Winston Churchill. He gained his status as an Elder Brother of Trinity House as a result of his position as First Lord of the Admiralty before and during the First World War. Often, especially on naval-related forays during the Second World War, Churchill was seen wearing the Trinity House cap or uniform. Churchill also had a Trinity House vessel named after him, THV Winston Churchill.
Governance
Trinity House is ruled by a court of thirty-one Elder Brethren, presided over by its Master. These are appointed from 300 Younger Brethren who act as advisors and perform other duties as needed. The Younger Brethren are appointed from lay people with maritime experience, mainly naval officers and ships' masters, but also harbourmasters, pilots, yachtsmen, and anyone with useful experience.Headquarters
The headquarters of the Corporation are the present Trinity House, which was designed by architect Samuel Wyatt and built in 1796. It has a suite of five state rooms with views over Trinity Square, the Tower of London and the River Thames.Trinity High Water
Trinity High Water, abbreviated THW, was a vertical datum used for legal purposes in the River Thames and informally over a much wider area. Though not thus defined, it was about above mean sea level.The concept had its origin in the London Dock Act 1800 which authorised the making of the Wapping basin of the London Docks and specified its minimum depth ie. over the sill. At that time there was no Ordnance Datum or other accepted vertical benchmark. Therefore, the 1800 Act defined the benchmark for this dock as "the level of the river at low-water mark". Since opinions about this might vary, it added:
Accordingly, Trinity House — in the person of Captain Joseph Huddart — set a stone in the external wing wall of the Hermitage Entrance to the London Docks. It was inscribed Similar stones were afterwards set for Wapping and Shadwell entrances.
This established a benchmark which was supposedly extended for further purposes eg. the sill heights of other docks and for high water also.
Trinity High Water was marked on the bridges in the tidal Thames and at each such location denoted the average level attained by the highest normal tides; occasional freak tides could rise several feet higher.
Trinity High Water Mark was much used as a datum in London for legal purposes. It was required to be marked on all drawings of property adjacent to the river when submitted to the Thames Conservancy. As another example, the minimum height of river walls were specified in feet and inches above T.H.W. The benchmark was used in other contexts, such as "Luton is 400 feet above Trinity high-water"; the elevations of water reservoirs; depths in the Geological Survey ; the depth of an archaeological find; and for railway elevations.
Despite the importance of the Trinity Standard benchmark for legal purposes, it appears that there were discrepancies, some of them grave. Inconsistent standards purporting to be T.H.W. existed. Some stones set by Captain Huddart afterwards could not be found.
Eventually, it was deemed by the Port of London Act 1968 to be a level having a value of above Ordnance Datum Newlyn. and thus the connection with the Trinity House marker stones was abandoned.
Nautical assessors
In legal cases involving issues of navigation or seamanship eg. collisions at sea, Elder Brethren of Trinity House act as expert nautical advisors to the Admiralty Court in London. Usually, two Elder Brethren sit with the Admiralty judge. Their function is not to decide the case themselves, but to advise the presiding judge about the practicalities of seamanship and ship handling. When this happens, the parties are not allowed to produce expert witnesses of their own without a special reason, since the court considers itself to be well enough advised already. But if one of the colliding ships was a Trinity House vessel, Elder Brethren cannot be employed. Elder Brethren may perform the same functions in appeals.In a 2020 case about a multiple ship collision in the Suez Canal the Admiralty judge wrote a 306-paragraph judgement ending thus: