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pilots and lighthouses. life-saving institutions.
579
All who belong to the permanent pilotage staff are obliged in time
of war or important preparations for war, when the King so commands,
to serve in the Royal Navy. However, even in time of peace the pilot
service manages the rather intricate coast signal service of the Navy. The
Director-General of Pilotage and the personnel belonging to the pilotage
divisions are subject to military law.
The Pilot Personnel. The pilot personnel should have a thorough
knowledge of the waters in their district and of the shallows and reefs
in their vicinity, even when no seamarks have been set up; it devolves
upon them to set up beacons immediately after the ice has given way;
to keep watch so as to ensure that vessels arriving from abroad shall only
enter the officially sanctioned fairways and shall call at the custom-house;
to render their services as pilots to the seafaring public, and so forth. The
pilots are not in receipt of any fixed salary: their chief source of income
consists of the pilot dues paid by the public. However, at pilot stations
where there is little or nothing to be earned in this way, the personnel are
as a rule in receipt of a salary, ranging from 60 to 1 200 kronor. The
pilot dues at each pilot station are divided at the end of each month
between the pilots, generally in equal shares called lotslotter. These shares
vary greatly. Thus in 1911 the biggest share was 4 911 kronor,
and the smallest merely 4 kronor. The big share fell to the pilots at
Oxelösund, the tiny one to the personnel at a small station on the coast
of Öland.
In the autumn of 1912 the Pilotage Board (Lotsstyrelsen) submitted
to the Government a proposal for a revised scale of wages for the pilot
and lighthouse personnel. This scheme contained several new elements.
But, as it provided inter alia that the pilots should receive only 20 % of
the pilotage dues, and that their chief income should consist of their
fixed salary, it encountered stout opposition both from the shipping
interest, who were alarmed lest under the new arrangement the pilots should
lose interest in their work and consequently also their efficiency, and
from the pilots themselves, who declared that it would be impossible to
keep a wife and family under such miserable conditions.
The new scheme, which has been revised by a special committee, is to
be laid before the Riksdag.1
The Lighthouse Personnel. The lighthouse personnel has to attend to
the illumination of lighthouses: they must keep sea lights kindled from
sunset to sunrise, as long as navigation within the range of the light is
not impeded by solid ice; they have also to attend to fog-signalling. As
to the smaller lighthouses stationed in the waters of the skärgårds, and
which are only looked after once a week or more seldom being allowed
to burn on day and night, special lighting seasons are prescribed. The
1 Proposals have now been brought forward in the Riksdag for fixed scales of salary and
40 % of the pilot dues, but have not yet been parsed (October 1914).
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