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Lighthouses are not yet relics of the past, but they are undergoing a metamorphosis. For centuries the primary reason for their existence was to ensure a ship’s safe passage to her port of destination. Nowadays, when everything is being automated, the computer has also reached the captain’s bridge. Lighthouses have not ceased to be useful, but seamen no longer have recourse to them. All they need now in the space age is the GPS, which allows them to define their position regardless of the weather. What lighthouses have lost as navigational signs, they have gained as cultural heritage monuments. The age of splendour of sailing ships and lighthouses is past. While for a variety of reasons the great sailing vessels have all but disappeared from the high seas, lighthouses have become interesting monuments of maritime architecture, visited by large numbers of tourists. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Maritime Offices in Gdynia, Slupsk and Szczecin, which have joined forces with various tourist organizations and preservation societies to make our Polish lighthouses attractive places to visit.
Lighthouses, photogenic in themselves, also provide an attractive backdrop for holiday snapshots: family albums are full of such pictures. In contrast, not much has been written in the Polish language about lighthouses. Perhaps the best-known work with a lighthouse theme is Henryk Sienkiewicz’s short story “Latarnik” (“The Lighthouse Keeper”). So may this little book help you, gentle reader, to learn a little more about lighthouses, and about the Stilo lighthouse in particular, the “Lady of the dunes,” which has for 100 years now helped the ships in our waters to reach their destinations in safety.
(Please note: the former German names of the places mentioned in the text are given in parentheses after their Polish names)
At the beginning of the 20th century a lighthouse was built in the tiny seaside hamlet of Stilo in the community of Choczewo (Chottschow).
During the second half of the 19th century the political situation in Europe was complicated. In the final years of that century and in the early years of the following one, a time of rapid industrial, technological and commercial growth, many states embarked on ambitious programmes to construct sailing ships and steamships, and to enlarge their fighting fleets. One consequence of this expansion of trade and shipping was the need to erect more lighthouses to ensure the safe operation of the shipping lanes. As a result of her defeat in the (Franco-Prussian) war of 1870-71, France was compelled to pay Prussia huge reparations – 5 billion francs in gold. Prussia’s position became all the stronger following her victory. The German administration strove to develop all the branches of the economy, including its maritime power. With some of this money, a series of lighthouses were built all along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. Between 1871 and 1914 such towers were erected at Jastarnia-Bór (Heisternest), Nidden (Zalew Kuroñski), a second one at Rozewie (Rixhöft), and also at Czo³pino (Scholpin), Oksywie (Oxhöft), Dar³owo (Rügenwalde), G¹ski (Funkenhagen), Buk in Mecklenburg, Dahmeshöved, Westermarkelsdorf, Dornbusch, Gdañsk - Nowy Port (Neufahrwasser), Krynica Morska (Kahlberg), Warnemünde, Arkona, Staberhuk, Ustka (Stolpmünde), Stilo (Stilo) and Ko³obrzeg (Kolberg). Most of these lighthouses came under the control of the Polish Maritime Administration after the First World War, then again after the Second World War. Among the lighthouses that were erected during this period (1871-1914) is the one at Stilo. Towards the end of the 19th century, a series of accidents had occurred in the southern Baltic: many vessels, among them Dutch sailing ships, Danish schooners, Swedish, Norwegian and German steamers, and a whole lot of fishing smacks, had run aground on sandbanks. In the hope of preventing further wrecks, a scheme for improving the marking of this section of the Baltic coast was put forward.
In response to a proposal by the German Shipping Association in 1901, the Prussian government decided to build a modern lighthouse fitted with a foghorn. The choice of site was no accident. About half-way between Rozewie (Rixhöft ) and Czo³pino (Scholpin) not far from the hamlet of Stilo, a beacon stood on the highest dune (45 m above sea level) about 1 km from the seashore. Twenty metres tall, it was in the shape of an octagonal pyramid, and painted in red and white stripes. For more than 45 years, one Heinrich Bork, the owner of the farm at £ebski Bór (also known as Stielow, after the name of the original owner, or Osetnik, after the thistles that grew in the area) had looked after this beacon, receiving a monthly remuneration of 4 talars for his trouble. This beacon had played its part well enough so long as the shipping was light, but it could no longer cope with the heavier traffic. So it was this spot that was chosen as the site of the future lighthouse. It was designed at the beginning of the 20th century, in the main by the famous Prussian civil engineer Walter Koerte (1855-1914). Construction of the Stilo lighthouse began in 1904, and it came into operation in 1906. The total cost of construction was 82 000 marks, 10 000 of which were spent on the optical equipment. The date of completion was commemorated by a brass plaque fixed to the door leading to the anteroom beneath the lantern on the upper gallery. In the early 1990s, the plaque was still in place, but collectors of such objects, as memorabilia or scrap, will have been sorely tempted to remove it. It is an irreplaceable loss.
The centenary of the Stilo lighthouse thus falls in 2006.
The drawings of the lighthouse and its ancillary buildings bear the stamps of the company erecting navigational structures on the Baltic coast. This company – Julius Pintsch of Berlin – was involved not only in their design but also in the actual construction work. Fig. 2 shows a stamp securing Julius Pintsch’s copyright to the drawings (law of 1870) (left), and a company date stamp with the inscription „Julius Pintsch Berlin 0. 27. Andreas – Strasse 72/73.”
According to the original design drawing (Fig. 1), the building was to be a 30-metre-tall, 16-sided, 10-storey cast steel tower, 7.3 m broad at the base, and 3.9 m just below the lantern. The topmost, tenth floor was to be a chamber, glazed all round with two rows of rectangular windows, to house the optical and lighting equipment. This chamber, the lantern, was covered with a conical roof topped with a finial serving as a lightning conductor. Daylight and air reached each of the first seven floors through two windows situated opposite one another. On every successive floor the windows were displaced by 90 degrees. The eighth floor had three windows, the ninth one none at all. Entry to the tower was to be gained through south-facing double doors with 3 panels on each wing. Five steps led up to the entrance.
The structure of the Stilo tower is certainly worth a second glance, as it is one not often used in the design of lighthouses. On the left-hand side of the drawing in Fig. 1, the tower is marked with small, approximately rectangular areas indicating the constructional elements from which it was to be built. These are trapezium-shaped cast steel plates (of the same height, but the upper and lower sides of different lengths). Such a shape would ensure that the tower tapered towards the top. According to the original design, the body of the tower was to be built from 75 cm high cast steel plates bolted together. To prevent seepage of rainwater, the gaps between the plates were sealed with lead.
Such was the harmonious design of 1904; construction work began in that year and was completed in 1906.
The building that was actually erected differs somewhat from the original design. The most significant modifications are in the distribution of the windows in the body of the tower, the appearance of the lantern, the appearance of the entrance doors, and the size of the cast steel plates. The windows in the wall were arranged spirally upwards, and triangular rather than rectangular windows were used for the lantern glazing. The double entrance doors were replaced by a single large one with a smaller one inserted in it.
These changes made the tower look as if it were lighter and rising up into the air. The fourth visible alteration was that the exterior cast steel plates (manufactured at the Isselburg steelworks) were 20 cm higher than planned (height now 95 cm) and from 2.9 cm to 1.5 cm in thickness. This enabled the tower to be built with fewer components without altering the weight of the whole structure (approximately 30 tonnes).
The tower’s designers also gave some thought to its decorative elements and to the safety of visitors to the building. These aspects are to be found on the viewing and technical access galleries. The vertical components of the railings are sufficiently dense and the hand-rails high enough to ensure the safety of visitors wishing to admire the view from the top of the tower. A lighthouse has to be in operation non-stop throughout the year and in all weathers. The design took account of this with the provision of a heating system and the insulation of the tower’s exterior with thick slabs of cork painted white. The illustration shows the layout of the heating (radiators) and electrical systems in the top three storeys of the lighthouse: the watch room, the anteroom, and the lantern
Once the tower had been built and fully equipped, it entered service as a lighthouse. The final drawing of the new lighthouse was endorsed by the Harbour Inspector at Ustka (Der Hafenbauinspektor Stolpmünde) on 28 August 1908. According to this document (Fig. 4), the tower was set on a 1 m thick circular foundation 9.6 m in diameter set 1.5 m into the ground. Sunk into the foundation – part above, part below ground level – were anchors protruding 90 cm above ground and counterbalanced with one-tonne granite slabs. Five stone steps lead up to the entrance to the tower. The two-part door sports a curious floral motif. The ten storeys of the tapering, 16-sided tower are reached by means of a right-hand spiral staircase fixed to the inner walls of the tower and safeguarded by a banister. The storeys are separated from one another by grids that function as the ceiling for the lower storey and as the floor for the upper one. This is shown in Fig. 3. There are twenty windows in all: one on the ground floor, three on the top floor, and two on the other levels. They are arranged in such a way that, looking at the tower from the outside, they appear to be spiralling up the walls. This gives an impression of lightness to the structure. Inside the tower from the ground to the tenth floor there is a vertical shaft used for conveying materials essential for the efficient running of the lighthouse. On the first floor a door bars access to the shaft, which ends in the anteroom on the 9th floor. A door leads from this floor out to the viewing gallery, and adjacent to this door are the final set of stairs leading into the lantern itself. This has a diameter of 3.5 m. The viewing and access galleries are linked by a ladder up the outside of the tower wall. At the top of the tower is a finial that acts as a lightning conductor. The lantern is glazed with triangular panes only in the sector from which the sea and the neighbouring lighthouses at Rozewie and Czo³pino are visible. The landward sector of the lantern is not glazed, but covered with wood panelling on the inside and with white-painted metal sheeting on the outside. Standing at a height of 75 m above sea level, the lamps have a luminosity of 4,000,000 candles and a range of 23 nautical miles.
The prototype for the lantern at Stilo was the one produced for the Zahsensand lighthouse on the island of Als. The weathervane on the finial atop the lantern bears the number 1905 to commemorate the year of this lighthouse coming into service.
In 1905 three ancillary buildings were erected at the foot of the dune some 800 m to the south of the lighthouse. They included a generator house, later raised by one story, an equipment store, and a three-story building serving as living quarters, at first very likely for the lighthouse builders, and later for the lighthouse keepers and coastguards All these buildings have survived and are still in use: they stand in the street named ul. Latarników in the hamlet of Stilo.
Mr Johannes Braun from Aurich, a correspondent of mine from Germany, informs me that the construction work of Stilo buildings was carried out by a firm of building contractors from Pomerania.
A tower starts to function as a lighthouse once the light source and the optical equipment are in place. At Stilo this was the case following the installation of a system designed by Paul Müller, the head of the research station in Berlin Friedrichshagen working on maritime navigational signalling systems. It was registered in 1905 at the German Patent Office under number 178061. The firm of Wilhelm Weule of Goslar manufactured the optical equipment; this process included the grinding of the lens, prisms and rings. The original optical system in the Stilo lighthouse consisted of a Fresnel disc lens and prisms, and had an overall diameter of 1150 mm. The illustration shows a convex lens and three rings in the middle (dioptric) part and seven prismatic rings in the outer (catadioptric) part. The two parts serve different purposes: the dioptric part refracts the rays emerging from the light source, while the catadioptric part collimates the light to produce a beam of parallel rays. This was the first time that this innovative system had been used to provide a lighthouse signal. The light source was a d.c. arc lamp (Preussische Gleichstrom Bogenlampe) mounted along with the optical equipment on a bearing turntable. In front of the lamp stood the lens (focal length 2500 mm), and in front of this was a 120-cm diameter light diffuser and louvers acting as a diaphragm. Forming a structure over 2 m tall, the table with the optical equipment performed one complete revolution in 3 seconds. The louvers were open during the first and second revolution, but shut during the third and fourth. This is how the characteristic signal of a group of 3 flashes in 12 seconds was produced. An undoubted advantage of this arrangement was the ease with which the lamp could be replaced by the lighthouse staff, when necessary. An identical optical system was later installed in the lighthouse at Hornum on the island of Sylt.
For seamen, the pilot book is an important document containing descriptions of the coast. The construction of the Stilo lighthouse was recorded in the German pilot book. In the 1911 edition, in the part dealing with the Baltic (Ostsee), in section 1. Deutsche Küste – b. Pommern, page 22, paragraph 96, we find the following information: the location of the lighthouse, its geographical coordinates, characteristics, luminosity (in Hefnere candles) and type of light, the height of the light and the tower, a description of the tower, the angle swept by the light, information about the foghorn and other useful navigational data. The colour scheme of the Stilo tower is given, a characteristic and unique feature of every lighthouse. In the case of Stilo, we are told that the tower is tricolored: the bottom 1/3 is black, the middle 1/3 white and the top 1/3 red. A further important piece of information is the nature of the light. According to the pilot book, the Stilo light is electric with the following characteristics: three flashes separated by two intervals of 3.0 s and one of 5.7 s during a period of 12 seconds. The characteristics “flashing light – in groups – white, 3 flashes per group” are recorded as follows: [0.1+(3.0) + 0.1+ (3.0) + 0.1 + (5.7) = 12].
The lighthouse tower and living quarters have survived unchanged since the beginning of their existence, but the lighting and optical systems have been modernised.
The original lighting and optical systems, designed for the lighthouse in 1905, were in use for over 20 years until 1926, when they were modernised. At the same time, the generator house at Stilo, providing power for the 1 km-distant lighthouse, was rebuilt. The change to the lighting system involved replacing the arc lamp with a special electric bulb, which improved the reliability of the lighthouse.
In order to avoid possible interruptions to the light signals, the original arc lamp was replaced, as we have mentioned, by a special 2000 W bulb with a filament 4.8 wide and 1.7 cm high. The lens, rings and prisms were retained. In comparison with the previous arrangement, the system was additionally equipped with round (spherical) reflectors and a reserve light run on liquefied gas. The updated system improved the concentration of light rays leaving the source and their emission in the required direction. The diffuser that had been used in association with the arc lamp had become obsolete and was therefore dismantled. Now the use of a reserve gas lamp required the necessary ancillary equipment to be installed. The reliability of the systems was continually being improved.
In 1936 the system controlling the light characteristics was modified. A low-voltage bulb (2000 W/ 30 V) with a filament 2.35 cm wide and 1.25 cm high was designed in 1938, and there were plans to install it in lighthouses as a light source. Trials carried out with this bulb and a spherical mirror acting as reflector achieved light intensities of the order of 10 250 000 HC in the laboratory and 950 000 HC under operating conditions. However, no information is available on whether this bulb was in fact installed in the Stilo lighthouse.
The original generator house in the hamlet of Stilo was taken out of service after a new building had been erected on the hill next to the lighthouse tower to house the generator supplying power to the lighthouse and the foghorn.
The Stilo lighthouse was in operation throughout World War II and came through the hostilities practically unscathed. However, it did sustain some damage right at the end of the war, when an unidentified aircraft fired a few rounds at it, smashing some of the lantern panes. But the damage was not enough to put the lighthouse out of action for long. Following repairs, it came back into service in April 1946 and has been active without interruption ever since.
After the war, progress in the development of lighting and optical systems was rapid. Companies carrying out research and development in this field were offering a variety of arrangements guaranteeing an almost 100% reliability of lighthouse operation. In the 1950s, the Maritime Office in Gdynia implemented a programme for modernising all navigational aids, including the lighthouses along the central coast. In the case of Stilo, a new, more powerful bulb (2500 W) was installed.
In the 1970s several of the lighthouses along the southern Baltic were again modernized, this time with lighting equipment supplied by AGA of Sweden. In 1975 a PRB-21 turntable was installed at Stilo. This was fitted with a set of three panels, each containing six main and two reserve halogen bulbs. The main bulbs are powered from the electricity grid, and the reserve ones by a battery of accumulators that can keep the lighthouse active for 18 hours. Apart from the installation of this new equipment, an automatic system for switching the lights on and off was introduced, to run in parallel with the traditional system: a photocell would switch the light on 15 minutes before dusk and off 15 minutes after dawn. This made the lighthouse keeper’s job easier, as he/she did not normally have to switch the lights on and off manually any more.
The mid-1970s saw the start of prospecting for petroleum under the Baltic. This preliminary search for oil was directed from the Polish Navy vessel ORP “Kopernik,” the crew of which worked in tandem with numerous lighthouse staff. Radiolocation antennae were erected by the side of lighthouses. The Stilo staff also participated in these operations.
The lighthouse staff has always taken care to ensure the building presents an aesthetically pleasing picture. To this end, the keepers have made use of various pieces of equipment that became obsolete and were taken down. This was the fate of the loudspeakers now placed on either side of the entrance steps. They had been mounted on a brick foghorn tower, taken out of service in 1985. The first foghorn (Nebelhorn) had been built at the same time as the lighthouse in 1906. The foghorn itself was mounted on a round, white-painted, 18.6 m high steel tower with a gallery and a conical roof (overall height 21 m). For technical reasons, the tower was located by the seashore (about 800 m from the lighthouse). The foghorn emitted three tones repeated every 35 seconds. When visibility was poor because of fog or driving snow, the foghorn was switched on from the lighthouse. Adjacent to the tower there was a building housing a compressor for producing the compressed air needed to operate the foghorn, which was fixed to the tower above the gallery. On-going erosion of the shoreline meant that the waterline was coming ever closer to the foghorn tower. This was taken down in the 1950s – the surviving foundation now stands on the beach.
After World War II, there began the reconstruction of lighthouses that had suffered damage. In the late 1950s, a project was put forward to build a lighthouse at Jastarnia that would replace the one destroyed in the early days of the war in 1939, and a search for suitable parts was set in motion. The column of the Stilo foghorn tower was deemed suitable, although only a 13.3 m-long section of it was actually used. The Stilo lighthouse was not deprived of a foghorn, however. In the early 1950s the original steel tower was replaced by a brick tower, on which the acoustic equipment from the earlier tower was now mounted. When the foghorn was taken out of service in the mid-1980s, the acoustic equipment, which had been functional up till then, was removed. All that is left is the 20-m tall tower. This has now been taken over by rock-climbing enthusiasts wishing to hone their skills, but also by those with less edifying aims. Unguarded, the tower is gradually succumbing to vandalism.
Another 20 years were to pass before further modernization took place. The mid-1990s saw the very rapid development of mobile communications and satellite navigation. Because of its less favourable position on the shore compared to the Rozewie Lighthouse, Stilo lost the race to be equipped with DGPS technology. But it had other things going for it, and soon, on 26 April 2000, mobile phone equipment was installed. A mobile crane was used to hoist and install three directional antennae beneath the lower gallery, which improved mobile communications in this area. At the same time, the opportunity was taken to inspect the state of the conical roof of the lighthouse. This was done from the crane’s platform, which was extended well above the roof. What a thrilling experience it was for those people on the platform itself! The inspection showed the roof to be in good condition, so it was decided to leave the conservation work until the lighthouse was due for renovation. It was a sunny and windless day, so the installation of the mobile communications equipment went off smoothly, and was completed by the afternoon. The following week the air-conditioning and the monitoring and measuring systems were put in place, which meant that the commune of Choczewo was now connected to the mobile telephone system.
In conformation with IALA recommendations, the external appearance of lighthouses must not change, i.e. the color scheme and the light characteristics given in the pilot book must be maintained. To ensure the good visibility of its color scheme, the Stilo lighthouse receives a fresh coat of paint every 15 years or so. The autumn of 2004 saw the tower stripped of its old paint layers and repainted in the traditional tri-colored scheme of 1/3 red, 1/3 white and 1/3 black from top to bottom. At the same time as the lighthouse was being painted, the generator house was undergoing a thorough renovation. It received a new roof; the northern part, where the signal mast had once stood, was lowered; cladding was put on the walls; the windows were replaced; and the whole interior of the building was repainted.
And so one could bring the history of this lighthouse to an end. But, a lighthouse lives together with the people who devote part of their lives to it. And the Stilo lighthouse, too, would be a dead, soulless building without people, without its keepers. From the very beginning of its existence, the Stilo lighthouse has always been manned by keepers, who were ever on duty, making sure the light never went out.
Here is a list of the names of the lighthouse-keepers from Stilo’s inception to the present day:
Lighthouse-keepers
Lp Name Period of employment
Fredrich Bork Stilobacke - 1861 - ?
Otto Stöcker c. 1925
Adalbert Dinse c. 1925
Selke Benno c. 1925
Oscar Thomas To 1945
P. Prüztt To 1945
Wojciech Jagusiak, A corporal in the Polish border guard regiment, 1945-1948
Roman Saustowicz 15.05.1945 – 30.09.1948
Jan Liss 15.06.1945 – 31.07.1974
Antoni Reszka 20.02.1948 – 01.12.1954
Stefan £ozicki 23.02.1948 – 31.12.1980
Jan Szataj 01.09.1949 – 28.02.1957
Adam Krzy¿anowski 22.03.1957 – 12.09.1964
Longin Godula 20.05.1961 – 31.08.1998
Henryk Liss, 01.08.1974 – 31.08.1979
Jerzy Kulling 05.11.1971 – 27.05.1979
Jan Sankowski 01.09.1979 – 31.06.1984
Adrzej Zielonko 06.01.1981 – 08.01.1990
Jan Orzechowski 01.07.1984 – 30.04.1987
Romuald £ozicki 02.07.1979
Weronika £ozicka d. Jagusiak 25.07.1990
Dariusz Godula 01.09.1998
The list includes P. Prüztt, the last German keeper of Stilo. Unfortunately, the documentation relating to Prüztt’s predecessors was destroyed during the hostilities, so the information in the regarding the pre-war keepers is necessarily fragmentary. It also shows the name of the first Polish keeper – this was Wojciech Jagusiak, a corporal in the Polish border guard regiment, who serves from 1945 to 1948. As we look through the list, we see that some surnames repeat themselves. It is slowly becoming a tradition that lighthouse keeping stays in the family and is passed on from generation to generation. This has happened not only at Stilo, but also at Hel, Rozewie, Jaros³awiec and a few other Polish lighthouses.
Lighthouse keepers with many years’ service at Stilo: Stefan £ozicki, Jan Liss, and Longin Godula, who worked here for more than 30 years.
Stefan £ozicki was a colorful figure. He took part in the defensive war against the Nazi Germans in 1939. From Horodyszcze he was deported to Siberia; he served in the army of General Wladyslaw Anders. Having taken part in the campaigns in the Middle East and in Italy (the Battle of Monte Cassino), he returned to Poland after the war. He was the wireless operator in a tank that bulldozed an enemy vehicle into a ravine. He received the British War Medal 1939-1945. Employed by the radio section of the Maritime Office in Gdynia. In 1948 he began working at the Stilo lighthouse, where he was to be lighthouse keeper for 33 years. After a year of working together with his son Romuald, he handed over the Stilo keeper’s duties to him.
The Stilo lighthouse was made accessible to tourists in 1992, and can be visited in the summer holiday season. Accompanied by a member of the lighthouse staff, the visitor can climb to the top of the tower, en route seeing the original doors, staircase, the cork-clad interior wall, and the old wood panelling in the ante-room beneath the lantern. The 128 steps leading to the top are a gentle climb for anyone between the ages of 5 and 85.
Walking around the lighthouse you may sometimes come across the lighthouse keepers, both male and female, on their rounds. A particular attraction is a meeting with the lady lighthouse keeper Mrs Weronika £ozicka, one of the few women in this profession, or her lighthouse keeper husband Mr Romuald £ozicki, who will very entertainingly tell you all there is to know about this and the neighboring lighthouses at Rozewie and Czo³pino.
Now that we know the history of the place, we can climb up to the gallery, from where we have a wonderful view of the blue sea, the golden sands of the dunes and the green forests on the landward horizon.
On the cover of its supplement, the Dziennik Ba³tycki (a local newspaper) posed a rhetorical question regarding lighthouses and illustrating it with a photo of the Stilo tower: “Will it ever go out?” I think the reply is obvious. Anyway, even if it did, you would still be able to see the tower. It will be seen and visited by people, whose passion for the sea were aroused by Stefan ¯eromski, a famous Polish writer of the early 20th century, by maritime heritage enthusiasts and tourists alike, who will never fail to see any place worth a visit.
…. and if it should vanish from the face of the Earth? Well, we still have postcards of it, hundreds of which have been sent to the four corners of the planet.
About the author
Born in Gdynia, Poland in 1946. Apoloniusz £ysejko studied at the Naval Academy Gdynia. He received his officer’s commission in 1967 and in the same year he joined the Hydrografic Office of the Polish Navy. He was awarded a M.Sc. degree in hydrography at Poznzñ University in 1975. On retiring from the Navy in 1990, having headed the Hydrografic Department of the Polish Navy’s Hydrographic Office. Commander £ysejko moved to the Polish Maritime Administration, where he was Director of the Hydrographic Office of the Republic of Poland from 1991 till 1995. He was elected to the Council of the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities at the 1994 IALA conference in Honolulu. He was a member of the National Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Since 1995 he has been the Director of Navigational Aids at the Gdynia Maritime Authority. He retired from his job at the Maritime Administration in 2004. He remains a lighthouse enthusiast and, as a volunteer for the Society of Friends of the Polish Maritime Museum, organizes tourist activities in Polish lighthouses. He lives in Gdynia. www.apoliewa@wp.pl
This story appeared in the
June 2006 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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