Leaning Lighthouses
The Leaning Lighthouse of Puerto Morelos, Mexico, 'El Faro Inclinado', is a distinctive blue and white landmark in the seaside town of Puerto Morelos, halfway between Cancun and Playa del Carmen. It was built on the beach in 1946, replacing a rudimentary light on a metal pole, which had been in place since 1905.
About twenty years after its construction, Hurricane Beulah struck it, washing away the foundations, and causing it to tilt. Efforts to remove it failed and so it remains, a testament, were it needed, to the destructive power of hurricanes.
A lighthouse was essential, to warn vessels of the Great Mayan Reef that stretches more than 700 miles along the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, so in 1968, a third lighthouse was built. It also fell foul of a hurricane, Wilma, in 2005, but managed to remain vertical.
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In Estonia, the Kiipsaare Lighthouse stood on the tip of the island of Saaremaa. It was built in 1993, to warn seafarers in the Baltic Sea of the peninsula and to act as a waypoint.
Although it was originally almost a mile inland, erosion has meant that it is now 160 feet offshore and leaning. It is no longer active.
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Bremerhaven lighthouse, at the entrance to Bremen’s port, was listing so dangerously in 2022 that ships were forbidden to enter the Geeste River, for fear the building would collapse. The proposed plan was to demolish it if it didn’t topple by itself. This is quite a confused story and research leads to different accounts and photographs of structures that look completely unlike each other. However, it appears that it was pulled down eventually and part of it used in the construction of a replacement.
