1799: Jacob Baden

In the same year that the tower is finished Jacob Baden is appointed the new Lighthouse Supervisor. He had 15 years experience as a clerk and then a copyist in the Head Customs Office in Copenhagen.

Later that autumn he is visited by his cousin and namesake who writes the following description of the Naze:

“On the fourth Morning, Norway’s Mountain
Mass rais’d itself evermore over the Sea,
and the nearer we came the more terrible
these monstrous Masses of Stone appeared to me ...
It was as if my Soul were suddenly overpower’d
by the wild and untam’d Forces of the Void ...

“Nary a Tree to be seen, nary a Bush.
Everything is Stone and only Stone.
O Thou! That liest half sunken in the Sea
and half envelop’d in the Clouds
Thou terrifying Vision of Nature’s veritable Death –
Selhovden! ...

And to this Place my Cousin is sent
to be Viceroy over the eternal Fires of the Night ...
The Wind now rages with such Force
that the Blaze flames high into the Sky
and Sparks burst out in wide expanse!”