I took my drone out to Inchkeith Island this week, which was around 2.7 mile away from my location. The Island itself has a colourful past and has played a part in many wars and battles, as well as being used for a quarantine island during the plague. Inchkeith was also the location of a Language deprivation experiment ordered by King James IV of Scotland. During WW1 and WW2 the island had several Lewis Guns and a pair of 12 Pdr QF guns installed. By 1942, the island had one "Major Full Time Battery" of two 6" guns covering the North side of the island, two 6" guns covering the South side and the water between the island and Leith, a further two 6" guns in the West Fort, and two 9.2" guns, tasked to defend the dockyards further upstream against naval bombardment. The island would go on to have Bren and Bofors guns added for anti-aircraft defence. The island appears to have had around 160 troops stationed there, with dozens of buildings, emplacements, fire control centers, and nissen huts, many of which remain in varying states of repair. The island had several bomb shelters for use in the event of aerial attack, one of which within a cave in the cliffs.
Post-war, defences were dismantled commencing late 1945. By early January 1946, only a small number of troops with a "nucleus" of coastal guns remained, and finally in 1956/7, all military use of the island ceased, and ownership passed over to the Northern Lighthouse Board, who performed a variety of renovations on the island from the early 1960s onwards.
The island was previously worked as a farm but was abandoned and unkempt. In 1958, an experimental foghorn was installed, replacing the previous 19th century system. A diaphone system providing 4 blasts of 1.5 seconds once every minute was installed on Inchcolm, operated by radio telephone from Inchkeith. This was replaced with an electrically operated system controlled by an automatic fog detector in 1986. In 1986 the lighthouse was automated, allowing it to be remotely managed by a telephone connection. The Northern Lighthouse Board removed the permanent lightkeepers, and sold the island. The current lighthouse is powered by nickel-cadmium batteries, "charged on a time cycle of three times per week by one of two (12.5 KVA) markon alternators with TS3 Lister diesel engines
