The world's worst lighthouse

[@AngelWedge]

This is why you don't hire an architect to do a civil engineer's job.

[@nicholasdowns3502]

RCE would be proud of you!

[@wta1518]

No, this is why you don't hire an architect.

[@AngelWedge]

@@nicholasdowns3502 Apparently KZbin is reading my comments; because despite being subscribed to him it hasn't shown me any of RCE's content for a couple of months,and after posting this it did.

[@RFC3514]

I'm not sure selection of lighthouse locations is part of a civil engineering course. The issue wasn't with the construction. What they needed was a _surveyor._

[@EdinMike]

As an Architect Technician… I agree ! 😂

[@Mackarony5]

Just so everyone knows, the Tasman Sea is between Australia and New Zealand. The stretch of water between the mainland of Australia and Tasmania is called Bass Strait.

[@Camxaiver]

Looked to be on the NSW coast, not Tasmanian…

[@Mackarony5]

@@Camxaiver Yeah, that makes sense given that the majority of the Tasman Sea is on the NSW coast, with only a portion of it situated off the northeastern tip of Tasmania. It's named after the explorer Abel Tasman, not because it divides the Australian mainland and Tasmania. simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_Sea

[@Henrex2000]

​@@Mackarony5so like Washington DC and Washington state?

[@winkletter]

"It is a brutal bit of water, that." Such a British, gentlemanly thing for Tom to say.

[@aomrulestotally]

"Even after decommissioning, the lighthouse continued to cause navigational problems especially on moonlit nights when the golden sandstone tower glowed in the dark. So near the turn of the century, the tower was reduced to rubble to prevent any further disaster."

[@amandajones8841]

"As a result, the Cape St George Tower was unceremoniously used from 1917 to 1922 for target practice by the Royal Australian Navy and destroyed." It was so bad they shelled it from the sea.

[@samuelmellars7855]

​@@amandajones8841 that is amazing! I wish there was some record of whatever meeting was held where they decided "it's a hazard, we should remove it" and then went through the options and decided "Well the RAN boys have got big guns and are looking for an excuse to use them, just tell them to shell the damn thing!"

[@IceMetalPunk]

"What quarrel do you have with my lighthouse, might I ask?" "See, the thing about lighthouses that makes them useful... is that people can *see them from the water.* " "...now you're just being greedy."

[@pallasproserpina4118]

the "freshly-hewn stone" bit plus the discussion about him owning a salvage business made me think that he might have owned the quarry or the masonry company

[@danyunowork]

The 'fresh' part led me to think it was good when first built but got worse as the stone dried out or shifted.

[@DeGuerre]

Point of order, the Tasman Sea is the bit between Australia and New Zealand. Cape St George is in one of the more obscure legal jurisdictions in Australia. It used to be the only piece of coastline that was part of the ACT, now Jervis Bay Territory.

[@whophd]

**cringing in Australian** people getting Tasman Sea confused with Bass Strait again

[@nicolaplays1134]

And pronouncing it incorrectly :( (TAZ-mən)

[@Snowshowslow]

Name stupid names, win stupid prizes? 😉

[@maqusan22]

I've seen weather segments on Australian news get this wrong before.

[@ichVII]

@@Snowshowslow That reminds me of kzbin.info/www/bejne/moClmZlum5yWjq8 Its a sketch by Mitchell and Webb about stupid place names and a funny reinvision of how those names came to be.

[@saoirsedeltufo7436]

Yeah I was wondering if Tom would know it and point it out but alas

[@Epinardscaramel]

"lighthouse attached to the back of a cow" sounds like a Citation Needed bit 🥰😄

[@qwertyTRiG]

Was the cow juggling?

[@daniellemurnett2534]

See this is the real debate we should be having. Was it on a cow that was juggling in an office chair, or was it on a donkey in a cart headed towards an extremely dangerous loop the loop?

[@cyberfutur5000]

Hmm, given him being an architect it probably focused the heat of the sun into a death ray of sorts and burned them down while parked.

[@empath69]

no, that would be an engineer - an architect would merely make a *pretty* lighthouse that's pleasing to look at but in fact no use at all (which turned out to be the case, but not because of the *design* itself...)

[@masansr]

Was it just a blue canary in the outlet by the light-switch?

[@crash.override]

Who watches over you.

[@AngelWedge]

Not to put too fine a point on it

[@PhilipStorry]

Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet...

[@PhilipStorry]

Make a little bird house in your soul...

[@AliDave]

Filibuster vigilantly

[@rincewindtvd]

The captions have different colours for each person, and are moved so they don't overlay text areas. First time I've seen anything like that on KZbin, fantastic work. Also interesting fact!

[@fsodn]

Yeah; the company that Tom uses for his high-end captioning is really great. I've used them for a video myself. Excellent quality work.

[@hadinossanosam4459]

Pretty much any of Tom's videos have amazing subtitles, because he cares about accessibility and pays someone to make proper subtitles for all his videos - with color-coding for people, placement to avoid overlapping, and even pronunciation details for jokes/weird sounds/... . My favourite subtitles are on the Tom Scott plus episode with Beardyman, it has all the beatboxing transcribed as IPA! :)

[@AngelWedge]

You can tell when somebody really cares about accessibility :) I read a news article today about a sculpture which has alt text (a sign describing it, I think with a QR code for an audio description), and how this is a great step forward for accessibility… but the news site didn't think to add alt text to their photo of the sign (which was too small for me to see clearly, and like many websites doesn't allow zooming in on mobile)

[@mittfh]

A new cycleway / footpath / nature trail has just opened next to me, and while the "adult" signs are standard, there's also a set of wooden sculptures illustrating the tale of Horace the Hedgehog, with the accompanying caption signs (at a Child-friendly height) written in both English and Braille.

[@pascalejacquelinepetit5131]

Loved the humour and interaction of the team! Great episode!

[@George_vv]

The tiny lighthouse thing is pretty much the ending scene of the Truman Show. A classic painting of a tunnel on a brick wall in the sea.

[@jamietus1012]

Ah, listening to 3 people who don't know much about navigation talk about lighthouses was amusing. Also, Tom getting the ferry to Tasmania through the bass strait and the tasman sea confused was quite amusing. But for not knowing navigation, they asked some decent questions, very entertaining episode

[@Stirdix]

My thought was that the stone was magnetic and screwing with ship compasses

[@MrDannyDetail]

I was thinking along the lines of the stone containing iron ore, but I just thought it might have rapidly gone rusty in the salty sea air.

[@AxolotlPeet]

The lighthouse on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel (UK) was built too high up and kept being obscured by the sea fog. It's now been replaced by a lighthouse at either end of the island.

[@korumann]

The idea of smaller lighthouses nearer the shore isn't as far-fetched as you might think. In the great lakes region on particularly rocky sections of the shore they have "lower lights" placed at even intervals to help ships avoid the hazards. This got turned into a sermon, and a hymn "Let The Lower Lights Be Burning" a.k.a. "Brightly Beams Our Fathers Mercy"

[@oscarramage95]

Before I heard the answer, I was assuming he’d built at the bottom of the cliff instead of the top

[@Slikx666]

I was thinking about the code that the light gives out being the same as another lighthouse just along the coast. Yet again i was wrong. 🥴

[@brontewcat]

The lighthouse is actually on the southern point of Jervis Bay on the coast of NSW, not near Tasmania at all.

[@IOSALive]

Lateral with Tom Scott, Subscribed because your content is fantastic!

[@stevemoore12]

I guessed he built a replica of a different lighthouse to trick ships into docking in his port

[@PaulOllech]

I was kinda hoping this was about the Triangle Island lighthouse off the coast of British Columbia, which was abandoned for being too hostile for human life.

[@treasurerFinleyASC]

Cape St. George isn't in Tasmania. It is in New South Wales, South of Sydney. From a qualified civil engineer (who did not learn how to build lighthouses either!)

[@TheScarvig]

i would have kinda expected it to be located in an island where while its correct for the side of the island its standing on the island is so small that ships on the other side of the island could still see it and wrecked on the other side of the island because of it

[@VulcanTrekkie45]

My guess was that he purposely built an inadequate lighthouse to purposely sink ships on the rocks, because a lot of coastal communities like that will often see shipwrecks as a good thing and go loot them in short order.

[@deebea6364]

Always love seeing lateral uploads!

[@sophiamarchildon3998]

Initial thoughts: he had the lighthouse built "in the middle of the water" on some hard to safely reach/work tumultuous shallows (e.g. middle of a tidal bay surrounded by rocks). And they were suspicious of him because he had a big involvement in the quarry, ship, or building industries, generating himself big money with such ludicrous project. The shipwrecks were not because the lighthouse was not operating correctly or otherwise misleading. They rather happened during construction of the lighthouse itself.

[@tomskih203]

One of my favourite podcasts.

[@timschommer8548]

My bet: The lighthouse was in such a location that ships would be drawn into a reef or similar, wrecking the ship. Investigators suspected him because he chose the location for the lighthouse.

[@PianoKwanMan]

Why were investigators suspicious of Dawson, though?

[@lucbloom]

Plain incompetence? Lazy stone movement? Yea pretty vague

[@llearch]

According to a quick google search (and some reading between the lines): some civil engineers reviewed his plan, were concerned, and looked into it further. It was then objected to... and the local authority went ahead with it anyway for "reasons unknown", which sounds a lot to me like some shady backroom deals went on, and someone retired with a much fatter wallet and a hopefully very guilty conscience.

[@Rollermonkey1]

Wrong color lens? red vs green? Bad sectors? Inappropriate flashing pattern?

[@expectationlost]

"uproariously"

[@Schmidtelpunkt]

Why is Stuart Goldsmith not more often on panel shows?

[@waves_under_stars]

I guessed it was about the tide

[@Tosty_82]

Jumped in on the magical 1337 views

[@mhelvens]

A clear case of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. 😏

[@20storiesunder]

Hehe

[@suNn.K.O]

Tazz Man.

[@DanielKolbin]

hmmmmm

[@quintuscrinis]

It took 24 shipwrecks before they did anything to fix the situation? Excuse me for asking but isn't that a tiny bit wreckless given a lighthouse is supposed to make an area wreck less ships?

[@RFC3514]

It's the opposite of _wreckless._

[@pattheplanter]

@@RFC3514 The OED has this, from 1596 on. Wreckful: Causing shipwreck, ruin, or disaster; dangerous, destructive. Reckless is a different matter, from reck - to take care, notice, be troubled by.

[@whophd]

@@pattheplanteryou wreckon?

[@pattheplanter]

@@whophd It is no reak.

[@geoffroi-le-Hook]

Sophie is so fair

[@danielleoliver1734]

The sr hire T picked the location, they can’t be trusted to know where to build these things.

[@SRG-Learn]

pole

[@geoffroi-le-Hook]

isn't there ?