The world's worst lighthouse

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Stuart Goldsmith, Sophie Ward and Katie Steckles face a question about a question about a naval nightmare.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Stuart Goldsmith: ‪@stuartgoldsmithcomedy‬, / comcompod
Sophie Ward: ‪@SophsNotes‬, / sophsnotes
Katie Steckles: ‪@KatieSteckles‬, www.finitegroup.co.uk/
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2024.

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Опубликовано:

27 май 2024

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Комментарии : 92

@AngelWedge Месяц назад

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

@nicholasdowns3502 Месяц назад

RCE would be proud of you!

@wta1518 Месяц назад

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

@AngelWedge Месяц назад

@@nicholasdowns3502 Apparently RU-vid 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 Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

As an Architect Technician… I agree ! 😂

@Mackarony5 Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

Looked to be on the NSW coast, not Tasmanian…

@Mackarony5 Месяц назад

@@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

@winkletter Месяц назад

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

@aomrulestotally Месяц назад

"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 Месяц назад

"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 Месяц назад

@@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!"

@pallasproserpina4118 Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

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

@whophd Месяц назад

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

@nicolaplays1134 Месяц назад

And pronouncing it incorrectly :( (TAZ-mən)

@Snowshowslow Месяц назад

Name stupid names, win stupid prizes? 😉

@maqusan22 Месяц назад

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

@ichVII Месяц назад

@@Snowshowslow That reminds me of ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dOBhf8f7cXM.html Its a sketch by Mitchell and Webb about stupid place names and a funny reinvision of how those names came to be.

@IceMetalPunk Месяц назад

"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."

@DeGuerre Месяц назад

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.

@cyberfutur5000 Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

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...)

@andrewgrant6516 Месяц назад

A small lighthouse near the cliff is exactly how Wreckers worked. They would use lanterns with shutters to draw ships onto the coast without being seen from land. In Cornwall it was illegal to leave a candle in a window, in case a ship mistook it for a lighthouse.

@RFC3514 Месяц назад

Woah, those Cornwall candles must have had some serious power.

@nicolaplays1134 Месяц назад

@@RFC3514 In a world without electric light, a moonless night on an isolated bit of coastline would have been inCREDibly dark

@RFC3514 Месяц назад

@@nicolaplays1134 - And how does that relate to what I wrote?

@Archgeek0 Месяц назад

@@RFC3514 Easy, in unusually deep darkness, a candle doesn't need much power to be mistaken through a spyglass for a distant lighthouse.

@RFC3514 Месяц назад

@@Archgeek0 - A candle is still a candle and physics is still physics (i.e., light still decays with the cube of the distance). Unless a ship is already crashing into the rocks (i.e., really, really close to it), it's highly unlikely that anyone would confuse a household candle flame with a lighthouse... unless it's a really powerful candle (hence my original comment, see?). Also, I have found no evidence of such a law actually having existed (it's not impossible; there are plenty of pointless laws). There _were_ laws against placing light sources near the coast, but they were aimed at people using lanterns to deliberately simulate lighthouses, not single candles in private homes.

@masansr Месяц назад

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

@crash.override Месяц назад

Who watches over you.

@AngelWedge Месяц назад

Not to put too fine a point on it

@PhilipStorry Месяц назад

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

@PhilipStorry Месяц назад

Make a little bird house in your soul...

@AliDave 21 день назад

Filibuster vigilantly

@rincewindtvd Месяц назад

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 RU-vid, fantastic work. Also interesting fact!

@fsodn Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

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.

@George_vv Месяц назад

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.

@Epinardscaramel Месяц назад

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

@qwertyTRiG Месяц назад

Was the cow juggling?

@Stirdix Месяц назад

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

@MrDannyDetail Месяц назад

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.

@pascalejacquelinepetit5131 Месяц назад

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

@korumann Месяц назад

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"

@brontewcat Месяц назад

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

@AxolotlPeet Месяц назад

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.

@Slikx666 Месяц назад

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. 🥴

@PaulOllech 12 дней назад

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 17 дней назад

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!)

@stevemoore12 Месяц назад

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

@VulcanTrekkie45 Месяц назад

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.

@jamietus1012 Месяц назад

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

@oscarramage95 Месяц назад

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

@lohphat Месяц назад

It beckoned ships to get too close due to the Holy Grail-shaped beacon atop it.

@sophiamarchildon3998 Месяц назад

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.

@Schmidtelpunkt Месяц назад

Why is Stuart Goldsmith not more often on panel shows?

@TheScarvig Месяц назад

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

@timschommer8548 Месяц назад

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.

@Rollermonkey1 Месяц назад

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

@expectationlost Месяц назад

"uproariously"

@waves_under_stars Месяц назад

I guessed it was about the tide

@PianoKwanMan Месяц назад

Why were investigators suspicious of Dawson, though?

@lucbloom Месяц назад

Plain incompetence? Lazy stone movement? Yea pretty vague

@llearch Месяц назад

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.

@Tosty_82 Месяц назад

Jumped in on the magical 1337 views

@mhelvens Месяц назад

A clear case of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. 😏

@20storiesunder Месяц назад

Hehe

@suNn.K.O Месяц назад

Tazz Man.

@DanielKolbin Месяц назад

hmmmmm

@geoffroi-le-Hook Месяц назад

Sophie is so fair

@deebea6364 Месяц назад

Always love seeing lateral uploads!

@tomskih203 Месяц назад

One of my favourite podcasts.

@quintuscrinis8032 Месяц назад

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 Месяц назад

It's the opposite of _wreckless._

@pattheplanter Месяц назад

@@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 Месяц назад

@@pattheplanteryou wreckon?

@pattheplanter Месяц назад

@@whophd It is no reak.