One Man & His Lightship

Tony O’Neil has had a passion for boats and broadcasting for as long as he can remember, and now he runs LV18 in Harwich, a fitting reminder of how marine safety and music went hand in hand off the Essex coast

- Mike Trippitt

 

MOST MORNINGS from March to October, at 11am, Tony O’Neil opens a steel gate and walks the 15m gangway on to LV18, the last manned lightship of the Trinity House Fleet. He would not want to be anywhere else.

‘Being on here enables me to meet lots of people, which is a great joy to me. I am a people person,’ says Tony, as he makes himself comfortable at the ship’s bow in a moment of warm sunshine.

For the curator of the LV18 museum, and trustee of the Pharos Trust that owns it, the short walk from his home across Harwich Quay is the symbolic end of a 13-year journey to restore the vessel, turn it into a tourist attraction and bring it to a permanent berth. His own belief that you can do anything if you set your mind to it is something he admires in others.

‘This light vessel being here is a very good example of an almost unachievable project, that can be delivered by one or a very few people if you have got the staying power, and you really do believe what you are doing is right,’ Tony adds.

Tony grew up in Walton on the Naze enjoying, ‘an Arthur Ransome childhood bimbling about in the Backwaters on boats’. At an early age, he became fascinated with wireless and broadcasting. His father worked in wireless and was part of the pioneering days of radar and early warning systems, both in the RAF during the war and afterwards with Marconi. It was inevitable that when ‘pirates’ came to the Suffolk and Essex coast, Tony became hooked.

‘I lived and breathed offshore radio,’ he recounts. ‘I thought all little boys had pirate radio stations at the bottom of their gardens. I certainly did. And it wasn’t long before I went out and met up with them.’