La Jument Lighthouse

La Jument is the lighthouse of the famous storm photograph: a slim stone tower on a reef off Ushant, the island at the westernmost edge of Brittany, with a wall of white water rising around it and a keeper standing in the open doorway. The waters here are among the most feared in Europe, a meeting of Atlantic swell, fast tidal currents and reefs that for centuries turned the approaches to the Channel into a ship graveyard. Around three hundred metres from the shore, the tower rises about 48 metres from its rock, octagonal, with a gallery and lantern at the top.

Its origin is a private gift rather than a state programme. At the end of the nineteenth century a run of wrecks around Ushant and Molène — the worst being the steamer Drummond Castle in June 1896, lost with all but three of those aboard — pushed the question of new lights. Charles-Eugène Potron left 400,000 francs in his will for a lighthouse built of choice materials on one of the most dangerous points of this coast, with a deadline of a few years. Work began in 1904 and was brutal: currents and weather allowed only a few dozen hours of work in the first season, the foundation ended up smaller than planned, and the light was first shown in 1911, with the total bill roughly double the legacy.

The rock never quite accepted the tower. Storms cracked the lantern soon after it was lit, the foundations were strengthened after 1914, and in the 1930s engineers anchored the base with steel guy cables. Keepers lived inside through decades of winter seas until the light was automated in 1991. Two years earlier, on 21 December 1989, the photographer Jean Guichard, photographing the tower in a gale, caught keeper Théodore Malgorn at the door just as a huge wave broke over the tower; the image won a World Press Photo prize and has been reproduced on posters ever since. The lighthouse became a listed historic monument in 2017, and today it flashes red in groups of three.

Getting there

La Jument stands off Ushant (Ouessant), about 48 km from Brest as the crow flies; the nearest airport is Brest Bretagne (BES), about 53 km away. Penn Ar Bed passenger ferries sail to the island from Brest and Le Conquet all year and from Camaret in summer, calling at Molène on the way, and small Finistair planes fly to Ushant from Brest. The tower itself is not open; it is seen from the island's coast and from boats.