A lighthouse on the cliff

The brick tower stands 20 meters from the edge of the cliff, 27 meters above the Baltic. The walls are 95 cm thick at the base and 60 cm below the gallery, and the tower tapers toward the top to stand up better to the wind off the sea. The light burns 58 meters above the water.

1:300 West elevation: the tower on the edge of the cliff, the sea and beach on the left, the keeper’s house on the right. Heights above sea level.

Granite plinth from Kashubia, 1.8 m high. The stone came by cart from Krokowa, the brick by barge from Puck.
White cornices every two floors. From the sea they divide the tower into bands, so sailors can tell it by day.
Gallery at 55 m above sea level, with a cast-iron railing. Guests can come up here until sunset.
Lantern: sixteen panes in a cast-iron frame and a copper dome, green with patina today.
Stair tower on the south side, a separate cylinder with the stairs, so that each floor of the main tower is left whole for a room.
Keeper’s house, single-story, with the keeper’s room, a kitchen and the old office.

Six floors, 118 steps

For the first hundred years nobody slept in the tower: the floors held barrels of kerosene, spare panes and tools, and the keeper and his family lived in the house next door. When the light was automated, the storerooms emptied. In 2021 we turned them into five rooms, one per floor.

1:150 Vertical section through the tower from north to south: walls in section in black, the rooms on successive floors, the stair tower on the right. Levels above sea level, wall thickness in cm.

Ground floor: Entrance, drying room and the old workshop. From here, 118 steps up.
1. Forecastle: The old kerosene store; the walls still smell of the linseed oil they were sealed with.
2. Cabin: Spare lenses and lantern panes. A window to the north, straight out to sea.
3. Mess: Where the keepers ate during storm watches, when they didn’t go down to the house.
4. Chart Room: Charts, logbooks and a 1956 radio set, the same one that stands in the keeper’s room today.
5. Crow’s Nest: The watch room below the lantern, with three windows. The telescope stands where it always has.

Two flashes from one turn

The lens turns once every fifteen seconds. Around it are two panels that gather the lamp’s light into narrow beams. Each beam sweeps past your eye in 0.4 seconds, the second 2.4 seconds after the first. That makes the rhythm Fl(2) W 15s, by which a navigator picks out Mewia Kępa among the other lights of the coast.

The lantern of the Mewia Kępa lighthouse at night, up close, from the height of the gallery: behind the panes the Fresnel lens glows, above it the copper dome green with patina, below it the gallery with its railing, the sea and the sky after sunset behind. — The lantern at night, lens lit: the view from gallery height toward the sea, a frame from the 3D model of the lighthouse.

1:50 The lantern in section: dome, panes, the lens on its rotating table.

1:25 The lens from above: two panels 57.6° apart, beams 9.6° wide, turning clockwise.

flash 0.4 s eclipse 2.0 s flash 0.4 s darkness 12.2 s

Rotation: 360° in 15 s, or 24° per second. The lens table once floated on mercury; today it runs on a bearing.
Panels: The 2.4 s interval is 57.6° of rotation; a 0.4 s flash is a beam 9.6° wide.
Range: 21 nautical miles, about 39 km. From the deck of a yacht (eye 2 m above the water) the light rises over the horizon at about 19 miles.
Source: An LED lamp since 2019. Before that a 1,000 W bulb, and until 1938 a kerosene flame.

The keepers of Mewia Kępa

Since the first night in 1888, someone has written in the logbook when the light was lit and what the visibility was. There is only one gap in the logbook, from the war years.

Keepers and changes to the light
Years	Keeper	In the logbook
1888–1919	August Behrendt	Lights the lamp for the first time on October 1, 1888, at 17:41. Kerosene, a wick and a clockwork rotation mechanism wound every four hours.
1920–1939	Józef Konkel	The first Polish keeper at Mewia Kępa. In 1938 the tower gets electricity and a 1,000 W bulb.
1939–1945	—	The light is dark for most of the war. The last entry before the gap: ‘Visibility good. Light not lit.’
1945–1972	Franciszek Myszk	Rebuilds the lantern, fits new panes and a radio set. Keeps the logbook in Kashubian and Polish.
1972–2004	Teresa and Jan Długi	In 1994 the light goes automatic. The keepers stay on: they clean the panes, grease the mechanism, keep the logbook.
since 2004	Piotr Długi	LED in 2019, rooms in the tower in 2021. He still keeps the logbook, and guest bookings go into it like any other night.

A keeper’s day today

Morning: An entry on putting out the light, weather and visibility, breakfast for the guests.
Weekly: Washing the sixteen lantern panes from inside and from the gallery.
Monthly: Greasing the rotation mechanism and timing the period with a stopwatch: it must be 15.0 s.
Evening: Checking the lamp before dusk and the entry: ‘Light lit.’

Sleep one floor below the lantern Today’s logbook