Historic lightship

Remember this quirky  little ship which guided both ships and flying boats into Southampton water for decades.
The Calshot lightship was moored off Calshot Spit at the entrance to Southampton Water, and you couldn’t miss her because of the bright red colour and the revolving beams from her tower light warning of the sandbanks near the entrance to the waterway to the port.
She’s been retired now for nigh on 30 years and spent 20 years as a symbolic welcome to the city’s Ocean Village marina where she was sunk in a concrete base by the landside entrance. Sadly her condition deteriorated over the years and she was in need of much TLC. So much so that she might have been scrapped to make way for new development in the marina.
That’s when the city’s aviation museum stepped in to save the 140-ton historic lightship, built in 1914 at the John I Thornycroft shipyard for Trinity House, and moved her to a new home at the city’s Trafalgar Dock.

She is now one of the few lightships which have been preserved, and for many in a seafaring city is a reminder of the days when the port served both shipping and planes, as an airport where trans-Atlantic seaplanes were ‘docked as well as liners.