Lightship 95

Ordered by Trinity House in June 1937, Lightship 95 left Dartmouth's Philip & Son shipyard to be handed over to Trinity House on May 31st 1939, making her the last lightship to be completed before the outbreak of WWII.

She was one of the the first modern lightships built to replace the aging wooden lightship fleet. Mod-cons such as electric lamps, and diesel-driven dynamos to power the light were first fitted to the ill-fated Lightship 90 only a couple of years earlier, in 1937. Going forward, this design, complete with a steel lattice light tower amidships became one of the staples of the Trinity House fleet, with some of her sister ships remaining in active service even today.

On December 2nd 1966 whilst serving at the Varne station in the English Channel she dragged her anchors and ran adrift in what were described as hurricane-force gusts. The crew were forced to abandon the ship, being taken off by the Dover lifeboat.

In 1972 she became the first lightship to serve at the Falls station, and shortly after this she was fitted with a helicopter deck at the stern, which allowed crews and supplies to be flown to and from the vessel.

In 1994 the light was converted to run off of power generated by on-board solar panels.

Sold out of Trinity House service in 2004, she found her way to Trinity Buoy Wharf in London and was moored alongside the old Trinity House Depot, with it's distinctive Gault brick lighthouse and buoy chain sheds, where it underwent a sympathetic restoration and conversion for use as a recording studio. As a part of these works, in 2014 a new large structure was added to replace the wheelhouse that was removed during conversion to automatic operation in the 1980s.