Lighthouses Honor

The Pathfinder Lighthouses Honor teaches you to read one of the oldest technologies in navigation: the tower that shows where the danger is and where the way lies. The full requirements of the Lighthouses Honor are in the catalog (code HM-073) and are summarized here, with no answer key. The data was checked on October 6, 2026, against Brazilian Navy and international sources.

🗼What is the Pathfinder Lighthouses Honor and what are the requirements?

The Lighthouses Honor has the code HM-073, belongs to the Arts & Crafts area and is at level 1. According to the catalog, it was created in 2007 by the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and has no prerequisite. The eight requirements are summarized below; other honors in the area appear in the guide to Arts and Crafts honors.

Desbravai catalog, summarized with no answers; the full wording is on the honor's page.

💡What is the function of a lighthouse and how does a lighthouse work?

Encyclopaedia Britannica defines a lighthouse as a structure, usually a tower, that aids coastal navigation: it warns of danger, lets mariners know where they are and guides them to their destination. In Brazil, the Navy standard NORMAM-601/DHN of 2023 (the Brazilian Maritime Authority's rules for aids to navigation) calls a fixed structure with a luminous range of more than 10 nautical miles (about 18.5 km) a farol (lighthouse), and one that reaches up to that distance a farolete (minor light).

By day, the standard says, a signal is recognized by its color, shape, topmark and number, where there is one. At night what counts is the light characteristic, the combination of rhythm and color that repeats every period. The Santa Marta Lighthouse in Laguna, in the state of Santa Catarina, shows three occultations every 30 seconds, according to the Lista de Faróis, the official List of Lights of the Navy's Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation (DHN). The daytime paint pattern is called a daymark; according to Britannica, lighthouses on land are usually white and, in open water or against a light background, carry red or black bands.

In fog, the fog signal takes over. The first ones were cannon shots and bells; the 20th century brought the siren and the diaphone, and modern electric signals carry from half a mile to 5 nautical miles. According to Britannica, wind direction, humidity and turbulence change the range, and differences in wind and temperature with height can bend the sound and create zones of silence. In Brazil, says NORMAM-601, sound signals basically mark drilling and subsea exploration platforms.

Source: NORMAM-601/DHN (Brazilian Navy, 2023) and Lista de Faróis, 40th edition (DHN, 2026-2027).

🏛️What were the first lighthouses, and does the Lighthouse of Alexandria still exist?

Before towers came bonfires on hilltops, already mentioned in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Greek poems from the 8th century BC, according to Britannica. The most famous lighthouse of the ancient world stood on the island of Pharos, off Alexandria, in Egypt. World History Encyclopedia records that Ptolemy I commissioned it around 300 BC, that Ptolemy II completed it about 20 years later and that height estimates range from 100 to 140 meters. The Portuguese word farol came into that language through Spanish and Latin, from the Greek Pháros, the name of the island, according to the Priberam dictionary.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria no longer exists. It probably fell in an earthquake in the 1330s, and its granite foundations were reused in the Qaitbay fort in the 15th century. Britannica treats it as the first authenticated lighthouse in history; World History Encyclopedia points out that it was not the first aid to mariners, but probably the first monumental one.

A person who studies lighthouses is called a pharologist. The word pharology, the science of lighthouses and signal lights, was recorded in 1847, according to lexicographer Michael Quinion; a Portuguese form of the word does not yet appear in the Michaelis or Priberam dictionaries.

🔍How does a Fresnel lens work and why is it so effective?

French physicist Augustin Fresnel, called to Paris in 1819 to study lighthouse illumination, proposed stepped lenses that produce parallel rays stronger and cheaper than those of the mirrors used until then. The first was installed in July 1823 at the Cordouan Lighthouse in France, according to the monument's official website.

As Britannica describes it, the panel has a central lens, the bull's-eye, surrounded by rings of glass prisms. It gathers the light the lamp scatters, including what would escape toward the sky or the sea, and concentrates it into a narrow horizontal beam. The solid lenses of the time were far too heavy because of the thickness of the glass, explains researcher Thomas Tag of the US Lighthouse Society, and the ring design solved the problem. With the same burner, the best mirrors gave about 20,000 candlepower; the Fresnel lens, about 80,000.

Lenses come in sizes called orders, and a 1st-order lens has more than 17 times the power of a 6th-order one, according to the US National Park Service. In Salvador, a French 1st-order lens has been working since August 20, 1890, and was still in operation in 2020, according to the Brazilian Navy's dossier for IALA, the international body that brings together lighthouse authorities.

🔥What fuel did lighthouses use, and how do automated lighthouses work?

According to Britannica, wood lasted until about 1800, and coal gained ground from 1550: a single lighthouse could burn 300 tonnes or more a year. In 1782 came Aimé Argand's lamp, with a smokeless flame, which burned fish oil, then vegetable oil and, around 1860, mineral oil. Then came kerosene, acetylene and electricity, which today includes LEDs.

In Brazil, the Barra Lighthouse started with whale oil (1698), moved to kerosene (1890) and then to electricity (1936). The Ilha Rasa lighthouse opened in 1829 with 21 colza oil lamps, got electric light in 1883 and, in 1909, switched to an incandescent kerosene apparatus; electricity only came back for good in the mid-20th century.

The lighthouse without a keeper was born with acetylene. Sweden's Gustaf Dalén created the sun valve, which turns the light off by day, and won the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physics for the automatic regulators that light gas-powered lighthouses and buoys. Today, Britannica explains, an automated lighthouse switches to its standby equipment on its own, is monitored remotely by cable, radio or satellite and can run on solar power, with batteries for the night.

Britannica; Brazilian Navy (CAMR and dossier for IALA, 2020).

⚓Who looks after Brazil's lighthouses, and do lighthouse keepers still exist?

In Brazil, maritime signaling falls to the Brazilian Navy (Marinha do Brasil), through its Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation (Diretoria de Hidrografia e Navegação, DHN); NORMAM-601 allows some lighthouses and minor lights to be run by other entities, under Navy oversight. The technical authority is the Centro de Auxílios à Navegação Almirante Moraes Rego (CAMR), the Navy's aids to navigation center, created in 1965 as the successor to the Repartição de Faróis (the old Lighthouse Department), founded in 1876. According to the CAMR, 26 military units maintain about 1,200 aids to navigation. The center's undated page, checked on October 6, 2026, says the Navy is responsible for 192 lighthouses, 32 of them manned, with permanent staff; publications from other years give different totals.

The person who works at the lighthouse is the lighthouse keeper (in Portuguese, faroleiro). The CAMR calls the keeper a fundamental part of the work, someone who, alone or with their family, keeps the light burning for mariners. At manned lighthouses, NORMAM-601 specifies, permanent staff ensure continuous operation. In the United Kingdom, every lighthouse has been automated and the profession has disappeared, Michael Quinion notes.

Not every lighthouse stands on an ocean coast. NORMAM-601 provides for lighthouses on the coast, on oceanic islands, banks, rocks, reefs and riverbanks. The DHN's Lista de Faróis 2026-2027 (40th edition) covers signals on the coast, rivers, lagoons and islands, and the CAMR cites about 50,000 km of waterways in the country. On the Great Lakes of North America there were more than 400 lighthouses in 2013, according to the US National Park Service.

Brazilian Navy: Lista de Faróis (40th edition, DHN), CAMR and dossier for IALA (2020).

✝️Why can the Word of God be compared to a lighthouse?

Requirement 8 starts with a Bible concordance, the index of the verses where each word appears: look up "light" and read the passages with your Unit. Two of them speak directly to the theme. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalm 119:105, NKJV). And Jesus says: "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life" (John 8:12, NKJV).

The comparison works because a lighthouse shows the rock and the safe course, but whoever is at the helm decides to follow the light. It is also constant: each lighthouse's characteristic does not change from one night to the next. Scripture plays that role for anyone who consults it before making a decision.

To memorize John 8:12, break the verse into chunks and add one a day. The guide on how to memorize Bible verses offers other techniques, and the study of the seven "I Am" statements of Jesus places the saying in the Gospel of John.

🧭How do you prepare, visit a lighthouse and earn the Lighthouses Honor?

For practice, give each Unit a flashlight and a stopwatch; each one invents a characteristic (two flashes every 10 seconds, for example) and the others try to identify it in the dark. Test a whistle with and against the wind, too, noting how far away it can be heard. A flat Fresnel-type magnifier shows the prism rings up close.

If you plan a visit, confirm everything first. In Laguna, Santa Catarina, the page of the local Navy port authority office (Delegacia da Capitania dos Portos) on the Santa Marta Lighthouse mentions visits by prior appointment. In Salvador, the Museu Náutico da Bahia (Bahia Nautical Museum), housed in the Santo Antônio da Barra Fort, was selling guided-tour tickets on its own website in October 2026; ask whether the tower will be open that day. Rules and hours change, so plan the trip with the guide to the Travel and Tourism Honor.

Common mistakes: calling any signal light a lighthouse, saying the Lighthouse of Alexandria was the first aid to mariners (before it there were bonfires on hilltops) and copying pre-answered honors without checking the source. Next comes the advanced Lighthouses Honor (HM-074, level 3). Before your evaluation, go over the full requirements of the Lighthouses Honor with your Instructor.