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Trinity House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Corporation of Trinity House came into being in 1514 by Royal Charter granted by Henry VIII. The first Master was Thomas Spert, captain of Henry’s flagship Mary Rose. The name of the guild derives from the church of Holy Trinity and St Clement, which adjoined the king's new dockyard at Deptford.[1]
Trinity House has three main functions:
- The care of all lighthouses in England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
- Providing aids to navigation, e.g. lightvessels, lighthouses, buoys, radio navigation services etc.
- Serving as a charitable organisation for mariners; looking after their safety, welfare, training etc.
The Corporation also inspects buoys etc provided by local harbour authorities, and provides a Deep Sea Pilot Service. It no longer provides local pilots for entering ports. Trinity House is financed from “Light Dues” levied on commercial shipping calling at ports in the United Kingdom.
The Master of the Corporation (now a merely honorary title) is the Duke of Edinburgh. Previous Masters of Trinity House have included the diarist Samuel Pepys and the Duke of Wellington, and Admiral William Penn (father of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania). Other prominent individuals in Britain, often connected with commercial shipping or the Admiralty, have been associated with Trinity House, including Winston Churchill, who gained his status as an Elder Brother of Trinity House as a result of his position as First Lord of the Admiralty before and during World War I. Often, especially on naval-related forays during the Second World War, he was seen in Trinity House cap or uniform.
The present Trinity House, was designed by architect Samuel Wyatt and built in 1796, it has a suite of five state rooms with views over Trinity Square, The Tower of London and The River Thames.
Equivalent bodies in other parts of the British Isles:
- Commissioners of Irish Lights - Ireland (Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland)
- Commissioners for Northern Lights - Scotland
- ^ Moorhouse, Geoffrey (2005). Great Harry’s Navy. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pp169,170. ISBN 0-297-64544-7.