Diu-head Lighthouse

The Lighthouse Station is about 20 km south of Kodinar town (on Veraval-Bhavnagar coastal highway).The station is approachable by walk from across the Madhwad creek. Madhwad is the fishing port and is connected to Kodinar by a pucca road.

The Lighthouse is situated on a Rocky head land on the Western extremity of Madhwad bay (previously Mandwa bay). There is a temple of the fishing community goddess „Madhwad Ayee‟ near the Lighthouse compound. In the olden days this portion of the coast and Kodinar taluka was under Amerli district and was part of the Baroda State. A Sub Divisional Officer from Amreli used to regularly visit the old Lighthouse at least once a year.

The old Lighthouse structure, a 9 m high hexagonal sand stone masonry tower was constructed in 1882 by the Baroda State. The tower still exists and now supports a water supply Tank. The first light consisted of a dioptric lens with one wick burner. It was a typical apparatus having an over head oil tank. This caused number of fire accidents.

No improvement to the Lighthouse could be done till the late 1950s although an attempt to install a new equipment was made in 1925, but due to larger size of optic, the same could not be accommodated inside the lantern. Mr D. Alan Stevenson, the lighthouse expert had visited the station in February 1927 and recommended for the over all improvement of the Lighthouse.

This light was discontinued in 1960 and a DA gas flasher and burner inside 500 mm optic and lantern was temporarily installed on a near by masonry cabin. This light started functioning to the same character and remained in operation till the new lighthouse was commissioned in 1969. Mean while the Radio Beacon equipment of Marconi make (UK) was installed at the station and was put on the Air on 289 kHz frequency on 10 February 1962.

The construction of the new Tower took a number of years to complete and finally, the 2nd order lighting equipment supplied by M/s B.B.T , Paris was installed on the new tower. The new lighthouse was commissioned into service on 1st February 1969. During 1975 a Baffle wall was constructed for fixing fog signal vibrator horns. The fog signal was put into operation on 15th December 1975. The fog signal service was discontinued in 1988. The „Marconi‟ RB equipment was a valve version equipment which was replaced in August 1990 by the state-of-the-art Indigenous equipment supplied by M/s MACE , Visakhapatnam.

The monitor station for Loran „C‟ West Coast chain was established at Diu head lighthouse station in March 1992. The emergency source of DA gas was replaced by Halogen lamp on 23rd February 1994 and the direct drive system was integrated on 6th November 1996.

The Radio beacon was discontinued at the station in April 2003.

Master Ledger of Diu-head Lighthouse (281.49 KB)