The Old Low Light

A photograph and a few words...

I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.

George Bernard Shaw 

As you can see from my photograph, it was a grey January day when I visited the 'Old Low Light' museum on the Quayside at North Shields Harbour on the coast of northeast England. Once a lighthouse, it is not the white tower in the photograph but the brick building halfway across to the left of that tower, one of whose gable end faces out into the harbour. The guiding light to mariners once shone from the upper window of that gable end. The white tower is the 'new' Low Light built to take over the old one's role in 1830.

The Old Low Light and its 'sister' the Old High Light (also replaced by a new lighthouse in 1830), built close to where I took my photograph, were carefully aligned lighthouses that guided 18th-century shipping through the treacherous waters of the mouth of the River Tyne. This was one hundred years before the building of the welcoming arms of the two piers you can see. Before that, shipping entering the River Tyne had a bumpy ride. 

Indeed, a storm in 1864 that wrecked the vessels Stanley and Friendship on the 'Black Middens' rocks near the mouth of the River Tyne, costing thirty-two lives, saw the formation at Tynemouth of the first Volunteer Life Brigade a year later. The now much better-known Royal National Lifeboat Institution was in its fledgling years and focused on the south coast of England. The driving force behind the formation of the Tynemouth VLB was that people on the shoreline could not help those in distress from the Stanley and Friendship and stood by helplessly as those onboard perished. The early success of that VLB in saving lives prompted the formation of others around the UK. At one point, forty existed, but today, only three remain. Two are at the mouth of the Tyne, and one is at Sunderland on the mouth of the Wear. Like the RNLI, they are charities and work alongside the RNLI to save lives at sea.

Let's return to the lighthouses. Although they carry the title 'Old', they were not the first guiding lights for shipping at North Shields. Construction of the first Low Light and High Light by Trinity House happened in the early 16th century. Then, given the constant wars with the Dutch through the 1600s, the English Government decided to improve defences around the country, and in North Shields built Clifford's Fort in 1672 as part of that coastal defence. The fort enclosed the Low Light. Of course, the irony is that England had a Dutch king less than twenty years after the fort's building. William and his English wife Mary were invited to rule by England's parliament in the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1668. It's thought that the Old Low Light building you see today replaced the original Low Light around 1727 to raise the lamp's height, making it visible from further out to sea. 

As an aside, Trinity House, given I mention it, was founded in 1514 by Henry VIII to regulate pilots on the River Thames. However, over the centuries, its responsibilities expanded significantly, encompassing lighthouse construction and maintenance, navigational aids, maritime safety standards, and, most recently, welfare services for seafarers.

But back to the Old Low Light. After its role was assumed by the newly built lighthouse in 1830, it was repurposed as an alms-house, providing shelter and support for poor and sick mariners. Alas, the alms-house closed its doors in 1928, and the building faced an uncertain future. Thankfully, recognition of its historical significance led to its preservation (it's now the oldest building on the North Shields quayside and grade 2 listed), with various organisations using it for maritime training purposes. Finally, in 2015, the Old Low Light embarked on a new chapter, opening its doors as a museum and heritage centre, telling the story of the fishing industry in North Shields and offering a view of North Shield's cultural development. I touched on the history of North Shields in my piece I must go down to the sea again around this time last year.

On my visit to the museum a special exhibition focused not just on the fishing industry of northeast England but on the broader merchant navy and its vital role in moving goods around the world. When we read of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, it reminds us of the constant peril of those who crew merchant shipping. Not just from the sea but as targets in conflict, too. It's not always recognised that in the Second World War, the UK's merchant marine suffered a far higher number of casualties as a percentage of those serving than any other branch of service, be it army, navy or air force. Britain's merchant fleet was the world's largest in both world wars. In the Great War, there were three thousand British-flagged ships, and seventeen thousand merchant seafarers lost their lives. In the Second World War, there were five thousand British-flagged ships, and thirty-two thousand merchant seafarers died. 

While I deeply admired those who served at sea then and still do so now, the exhibits I enjoyed most on my visit offered an insight into the social history of North Shields.

One of those I found particularly moving was the story of Mary Ann Macham, an enslaved woman who became part of North Shield's 19th-century local community.

Mary Ann was born on May 10, 1802, in Virginia. Her mother, Judy, was a slave and her father a 'gentleman's son'. Mary Ann was public auctioned for $450 at twelve years of age.

Sadly, lost to history is how Mary escaped the plantation in Virginia in 1830. However, from her account, "There was a great outcry when I was not found, and men on horseback dashed through the woods where I was hidden. I sat there trembling and terrified. They had two bloodhounds with them, kept to track runaway slaves". 

How Mary Ann then got from those woods to a coastal port is also unknown, although Hazel Edwards, senior keeper of history at Tyne and Wear Museums, offered: "It could be she was helped by a secret organisation called the Underground Rail Road who had a series of safe houses and contacts. They helped 10,000 people flee from the southern States to North America and Canada."

Mary Ann then managed to hide on a ship bound for Europe, possibly with the help of the ship's mate, Mr Outerway. In Mary's words again, "Mr. Outerway …. the mate of the ship... had a slave with him for Miss Spences, of the Friendly Society …. that family has always been kind." The Spences were a prominent Quaker family that lived in North Shields. Quaker families in northeast England played a leading role in the anti-slave movement. Many people also boycotted slave-produced products, in particular sugar and cotton. Another prominent Quaker couple, Anna Richardson and her husband, Henry, welcomed several African American anti-slavery campaigners into their home. Anna and her sister-in-law Ellen fund-raised in the northeast of England the £150 that allowed escaped slave and African American social reformer Frederick Douglass to buy his freedom.

Mary Ann's voyage lasted two months, and when the ship docked in Flushing in Holland, Mary boarded another vessel, The Atlas, bound for Hull in the UK. From there, she took a coach to England's northeast, arriving on Christmas Day 1831 and going on to live with the Spences, for whom she worked as a domestic servant. In 1841, at 39, she married James Blyth, a local rope maker and later a bankers' porter. Mary and James had no children, and James died in 1877. Mary Ann continued to live in North Shields until she moved in with her late husband's relatives in Newcastle. Mary Ann died in 1893 at the age of ninety-one. Her grave is in North Shields.

The Low Light museum's social history offering also crept the short distance across the mouth of the River Tyne to make mention of South Shields and the establishment in England of the earliest Muslim community from Yemen.

Again, with today's happenings in the Red Sea, Yemen is much in the news. Belief is the first Yemenis from the port city of Aden came to South Shields in the 1860s, and more formal records show that several hundred were living there in the 1890s. Between 1910 and 1930, there was a successive wave of immigration, and the community reached four thousand at one point.

To quote Leyla Al-Sayadi, the granddaughter of the community's now oldest member, "The port of Aden was an important link through the Suez Canal, and because it was a means to get to British-occupied Bombay, it was a convenient transport route. When the British arrived in Aden, it was a colonial pursuit, so it wasn't all happy for the Yemenis, but one positive was employment opportunities; in Yemen, there weren't a lot of opportunities, so they jumped at the chance to work on the ships… They did all sorts of jobs."

Of course, it wasn't easy for those first 19th-century Muslim visitors, and they struggled to find accommodation, so they set up their own boarding houses. Layla recalls, "They came from the sea and needed places to stay when the ships were in port, but the Yemenis weren't allowed to go wherever they liked… Race came first. People didn't know about Islam at all. Now, people are more clued up even if they aren't necessarily accurate. Back then, though, there was a lot of curiosity."

Leyla's grandfather set up a boarding house in South Shields, which the family still own. Interestingly, their lodgers are no longer Yemeni mariners but British students.

When Muhammed Ali visited the UK in 1977, he wished to pay his respects to the oldest Muslim community in Britain. His marriage to his wife Veronica Porsche was blessed in the Al Azhar, South Shields' Mosque, which was the first built in Britain. Leyla's mother was a flower girl for Veronica.

And just like the local British mariners, the Yemeni mariners of South Shields served in both world wars in the Merchant and Royal Navy. Some eight hundred lost their lives.

I visited the Old Low Light Museum expecting to discover more about Northeast England's rich maritime history. I did that, but to my pleasant surprise, I also gained insight into how the area welcomed those of other lands.