Page 156 - An Overview of Penghu

｜A lighthouse on Fisherman Island, its guards, and their families｜

The lighthouse is located in Chiziwei (a high ground in Xihaikou of Waian Village) on the southwest edge of
Xiyu. It is a level-four immobile white structure made from iron and features a dome. The lighthouse, boasting 500
candelas, can illuminate an area of up to 15 nautical miles.

The lighthouse was constructed about 170 years ago in 1778, by Jiang Yuan-shu, the Governor of Taiwan at
that time. In 1824, the lighthouse underwent renovation and was renamed the Xiyu Lighthouse, before being
transformed into a western-style lighthouse in 1875.

A 46-year-old Briton named Bararly and a 28-year-old Russian named Bismanski were guarding the
lighthouse when General Kabayama led his army to the Island in 1895. They both had a Japanese wife: one was a
38-year-old woman born in Gotō City, and the other was a woman with an unknown origin named Tamako.
Kabayama told the two guards that they could keep their jobs if they surrendered. He also informed the wives that
they would be escorted back to Japan if they wish. However, the men had no intention to stay, while the women
refused to leave their husbands, with whom they had spent several years. The couples left for Xiamen in the end.
The British couple had a daughter named Merry, who died of illness on this Island when she was eight. Her grave,
attached with a cross battered by the wind all year round and a stele inscribed with “The tomb of Merry, 1880”, was
set up in the mountain behind the lighthouse. She has no visitors, and only the domed lighthouse watches over her
while she lays in peace and loneliness.

The British guard had kept a diary between 1881 and 1893, which is still preserved in the lighthouse. He wrote
down his daily life on large pieces of western-style paper with fountain pens, which became thirteen 16 mm-thick
diaries. Admiral Courbet's invasion of Penghu on February 13, 1885, must have left a record in his diary as well.

The lonely lighthouse on the isolated island does happen to have a touching and romantic story behind it,
which sparks a profound feeling in the interviewer's heart. Ooshima Tatsujirō and Matsuoka Tsutau, the two guards
in charge of the lighthouse, must have the same feeling as the interviewer when carrying out their duties there.

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