Variable Pitch Propeller Controls

On the bridge of MV Cape Don, the variable-pitch propeller controls occupy a central position: engine RPM to the left, propeller pitch to the right. The autopilot sits to the left of the console; the radar unit stands behind to the right. The instrumentation is largely intact, the surfaces worn from decades of use by officers who worked the vessel through some of Australia's most demanding coastal waters. The controls drove a single 4-blade Kamewa variable-pitch propeller, approximately 2.6 m in diameter and weighing 5 tonnes, paired with a 5-cylinder 2-stroke Polar diesel producing 2,000 BHP at 250 RPM. Variable pitch gave the ship precise manoeuvring control without changing engine speed, which mattered enormously when working close to remote lighthouse jetties, picking up workboats in swell, or holding position off a rocky coastline where a conventional fixed-pitch vessel would have struggled. MV Cape Don was built at the State Dockyard, Newcastle, for the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service. Her keel was laid in 1961, she was launched on 28 May 1962, and her maiden voyage departed on 29 March 1963. For 27 years she served as a lighthouse supply tender and navigational aids maintenance vessel, home-ported at Fremantle and operating primarily along the Western Australian and Northern Territory coastlines, with work also along the Tasmanian and eastern Australian coasts. She supplied fuel, equipment, and stores to manned lighthouse stations, rotated keepers and their families, and carried government inspectors on coastal rounds. The progressive automation of Australian lighthouses through the 1980s reduced demand for vessels like her, and she was retired from government service in 1990. She is now the sole surviving vessel of the entire Commonwealth Lighthouse Service fleet, berthed at the former Coal Loader wharf at Balls Head Bay, Waverton, and registered on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels as HV000208. This photograph was made aboard the vessel in 2016.