Light Vessel 16

A lightvessel, or lightship, is a ship that acts as a lighthouse. They are used in waters that are too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouse construction. Although some records exist of fire beacons being placed on ships in Roman times, the first modern lightship was located off the Nore sandbank at the mouth of the River Thames in London, England, by its inventor Robert Hamblin in 1734. Lightships have since been rendered obsolete by advancing lighthouse construction techniques, and by large automated navigation buoys.

The PS Medway Queen is a paddle driven steamship, the only mobile estuary paddle steamer left in the United Kingdom. She was one of the "little ships of Dunkirk", making a record seven trips and rescuing 7,000 men in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Borstal is a location in the Medway unitary authority of Kent in South East England. Originally a village near Rochester, it has become absorbed by the expansion of that town. The youth prison at Borstal gave its name to the Borstal reform school system.

The Nore is a long bank of sand and silt running along the south-centre of the final narrowing of the Thames Estuary, England. Its south-west is the very narrow Nore Sand. Just short of the Nore's easternmost point where it fades into the channels it has a notable point once marked by a lightship on the line where the estuary of the Thames nominally becomes the North Sea. A lit buoy today stands on this often map-marked divisor: between Havengore Creek in east Essex and Warden Point on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.

Sevenstones Lightship is a lightvessel station off the Seven Stones Reef which is nearly 15 miles (24 km) to the west-north-west (WNW) of Land's End, Cornwall, and 7 miles (11 km) east-north-east (ENE) of the Isles of Scilly. The reef has been a navigational hazard to shipping for centuries with seventy-one named wrecks and an estimated two hundred shipwrecks overall, the most infamous being the oil tanker Torrey Canyon on 18 March 1967. The rocks are only exposed at half tide. Since it was not feasible to build a lighthouse, a lightvessel was provided by Trinity House. The first was moored near the reef on 20 August 1841 and exhibited its first light on 1 September 1841. She is permanently anchored in 40 fathoms (73 m) and is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north-east (NE) of the reef. Since 1987, the Sevenstones Lightship has been automated and unmanned.

Light Vessel Number 83 (LV-83) Swiftsure is a lightship and museum ship owned by Northwest Seaport in Seattle, Washington. Launched in 1904 at Camden, New Jersey and in active service until 1960 after serving on all five of the American west coast's lightship stations, it is the oldest surviving lightship in the United States, the only one still fitted with its original steam engine, and the last lightship with wooden decks. LV-83 was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989, and has been undergoing major restoration since 2008.

Island Harbour Marina, on the Isle of Wight, UK, is a commercial marina on the River Medina in the small hamlet of Binfield. It is located approximately halfway between Cowes and the County Town of Newport. Being a relatively small marina, it best suits pleasure craft of up to 20 metres in length. The marina accommodates both annual berthholders and short-term visiting craft.

North Carr is the last remaining Scottish lightship. She is 101 feet (31 m) in length, 25 feet (7.6 m) in beam and 268 tons.

The Tuncurry was a wooden carvel screw steamer built in 1903 at Cape Hawke in the Australian state of New South Wales, that was wrecked when she sprang a leak whilst carrying explosives, cement, whiskey, jam and other general cargo between Sydney and Brisbane. She was lost off Barrenjoey Head, Broken Bay, New South Wales on 22 October 1916.

TSS (RMS) Ben-my-Chree (III) No. 118605 – the third vessel in the company's history to be so named – was a passenger steamer operated by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company between 1908 and 1915. Ben-my-Chree was requisitioned by the Admiralty in 1915 and converted to a seaplane carrier; commissioned as HMS Ben-my-Chree, she was sunk by Turkish batteries on 11 January 1917.

Philip and Son was a shipbuilder in Kingswear, near Dartmouth, Devon, England. Operating from 1858 until the late 1990s, the company provided employment opportunities for nearly 141 years for many people of Dartmouth. It was Dartmouth's last industrial shipyard. A documentary film, Philip and Son, A Living Memory, presents the story of the industrial shipyard from its beginning to its eventual closure.

Mirosa is a Thames barge which was built in 1892. From 1892 until 1947, she sailed under the name Ready when the name was sold to Trinity House for a lightship support vessel. Under her new name, she traded until 1955. Mirosa has never had an engine.

Light Vessel No.57 was an American lightvessel that was built in 1891 and served on the Great Lakes, west of the Straits of Mackinac, from her construction to her retirement in 1924. She was partly dismantled, used as a clubhouse, and wrecked by a storm at some time after 1928. On December 16, 1996 the remains of Light Vessel No.57 were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Light Vessel 72 was a light vessel of Trinity House, a British lighthouse authority. Constructed in Sunderland in 1903 she served as a navigational beacon in the British Isles until the Second World War. From 18 June 1944, in Operation Overlord, she was positioned off Normandy to mark the mineswept shipping lanes and the approaches to the Mulberry harbours. After the war she was deployed to several stations, lastly in the Bristol Channel until sold for scrap in 1973. Saved by the intervention of a scrapyard manager, she has lain on a mud bank in Neath, Wales, ever since. Groups from Sunderland made proposals to return her to where she was built, but the plan was never realised.

The Coquette was a 19th-century yacht and pilot boat, built in 1845 by Louis Winde, at the Winde & Clinkard shipyard in Chelsea, Massachusetts for yachtsmen James A. Perkins. Her design was based on a model by shipbuilder Dennison J. Lawlor. The Coquette was a good example of an early American yacht with a clipper bow. As a yacht, she won the attention for outsailing the larger New York yacht Maria at the second New York Yacht Club regatta in 1846. Perkins sold the Coquette to the Boston Pilots' Association for pilot service in 1848. She continued as a pilot boat until 1867 when she was sold as a Blackbirder to be used on the African coast.

Light Vessel 95 is a former lightship that has been used as a recording studio since the early 2000s. She was built by Philip and Son at Dartmouth, Devon, in 1939 for Trinity House, the body responsible for provision of maritime navigation aids in England and Wales. Light Vessel 95 served at Goodwin Sands, The Wash, Varne Bank and at the Sevenstones Station. She was among the last ten light vessels in Trinity House service and was converted to automatic operation in the 1990s. Light Vessel 95 was sold in 2003 and converted into a recording studio. Since 2008 she has been moored at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London.

Light Vessel 93 was a light vessel of Trinity House, currently used as a photography studio. She was built in Dartmouth, Devon, in 1938 and served on stations including Galloper sand bank, the River Thames, Goodwin Sands, Inner Dowsing, Sunk Sands and Foxtrot 3. She was sold to Michele Turriani in 2004 and converted into a studio operating at Royal Victoria Dock in London. Turriani attempted to sell the vessel from 2020. In 2024 Light Vessel 93 was moved to King George V Dock.