LIGHTHOUSES - VNETAK

Motifs: lighthouses, photos by D. Fabijanić and A. Carli Following Napoleon’s defeat and thereby the settling of the military-political situation on the Adriatic Sea, a favourable climate for the establishment of a secure nocturnal sailing set in. Ten huge shipwrecks in the Gulf of Trieste alone in the course of the year 1816 finally induced the authorized bodies to undertake something. The delegation of the Trieste Bourse decided upon a historical undertaking and independently launched the building of modern lighthouses on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. The building of the first lighthouses (Savudrija, 1818; Trieste, 1832; Porer, 1846, and Veli Rat, 1849) was entirely financed by the shareholders. The maritime authorities (Governo Maritimo in Trieste), though established as late as the year 1850 for the purpose of regulating and supervising of all the activities connected with maritime affairs, was given supervision custody of the management and administration of maritime lighting. At the beginning of the seventies of the 19th century this was followed by the founding of their own engineering office which meant that they had taken over the responsibility of the building of new and maintenance of the existing lighthouse facilities. By that time the system of collection of the charge for lighting (lanternaggio) was sufficiently developed so that it helped finance all the port activities including maritime signalling. The charge was collected per freight ton of cargo on all the vessels that carried out unloading in the larger ports from Venice all through to the estuary of the river Bojana. Half the number of all built lighthouses on the area of the Austrian (later Austrian-Hungarian) littoral was activated in the period from 1870 to 1877. Vnetak, 44o 37’N, 14o 14’E Due to the need to light the waterway toward the Istria peninsula and the entrance into the Kvarner (with the already existing lighthouses of Galiola and Prestenice) and the marking of the island of Unije, as well as on account of the possible optical trick (because the light of Galiola is visible across some low parts of the island) in 1873 a lantern was switched on Cape Vnetak: a fixed white light visible from the distance of 12 nautical miles, later also with a red sector (visibility: 5 nautical miles). Two kilometres of country path across the large field where we can currently find a small airfield that divides the south-western Cape Unije where the lantern is situated from the actual settlement of Unije. This is the reason that Vnetak has always employed lighthouse keepers with school-age children. As it was always a lighthouse with one lighthouse keeper, his wife was at the same time assistant to the lighthouse keeper and for this service received a quarter of the salary. The one-storey facility from which rises a tall lighthouse tower of 17-meter height above the sea level has one apartment and some supporting facilities (the storage of olefiant gas, i.e. acetylene, sanitary facilities, oven and stockroom). Starting with the year 1912, the lighthouse has already been connected by means of a submarine cable with the port captaincy of Mali Lošinj: it was the lighthouse keeper who was the first to transfer the news about the stranding of the Italian war submarine on the cliff of Galiola that is positioned in the middle of the Kvarner. In the Second World War the lighting device and the cage that contained it were damaged. However, the facility itself remained whole as opposed to the neighbouring Galiola that was completely destroyed by the fire from the allied forces’ warships due to the suspicion that it housed the German military crew. The settlement of Unije was electrified rather late – in the year 1978, but the last lighthouse keeper left the lantern on Vnetak in 1982. Due to the automatization of the lighting work he switched off the aggregate was used for the needs of the households. The acetylene installation remained in order to supply the lighting of the lighthouse for another twenty years, up to the time when it was exchanged for solar plates.