Light dues for yachts are old hat?

[pugwash]

From "The Sea Was Our Village" written by Miles Smeeton in 1973, chapter one in which he buys Tzu Hang and makes his first voyage (Dover to Ramsgate):
"As soon as we were tied up, a uniformed officer from the Harbour Office scrambled down the wet ladder to ask where were from and to collect harbour and light dues. The harbour dues gave us two weeks' stay and the light dues were for a year. No one minds paying light dues once a year and the harbour dues were not expensive except that we were only stopping for a night..."

So it seems from this that light dues for yachts are nothing new. At some point quite recently, in fact, they must have been inflicted on yachts but then cancelled. Any info on this would be interesting.

PS Smeeton picked up a mooring buoy when his engine failed. Cost: seven shillings and sixpence (ie, about 35p).


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[AndrewB]

Ports are responsible for their own lights, and harbour dues always include an element to cover that. I believe that about 10 years ago, port responsibilities were considerably widened in that respect, to the evident displeasure of Trinity House. This is fairly certainly why Trinity House will not countenance the collection of light dues through harbour mooring charges, but is trying to force compulsory registration.

When was it that the Smeetons sailed through Ramsgate? By 1973 the marina had been in operation for five years or so at the eastern end of the Inner harbour. It was notorious as the most expensive marina on the south coast, I remember being outraged at a charge of £2 for a 30 footer overnight. On top of which any yacht over a certain size would be visited by a certain alcoholic customs officer, which meant a fair part of a bottle of gin.

It was then possible both to moor and even anchor in the Royal harbour, and there were still mooring buoys in the Inner harbour as well. But the high cost of the new marina had meant that local boats had moved onto most of them. A few mooring buoys still survive in the western arm of the Royal harbour.