Little Basses Reef Lighthouse is an offshore Lighthouse in South of Sri Lanka and it is operated and maintained by the Sri Lanka Navy. It is located on a reef called Kuda Ravana Kotuwa (Fort of Little Ravana), but when the British invaded Ceylon they named it Little Basses (fourteen km off the coast of Yala National Park and north east of the Great Basses Reef Lighthouse. The two Basses lighthouses are among the most famous offshore lighthouses of Asia.
The lighthouse was designed by Sir James Nicholas Douglass and built by William Douglass. It withstood the force of a tsunami in 2004 with only modest damage; it was repaired with assistance from the UK lighthouse authorities Trinity House and The Northern Lighthouse Board.
The lighthouse is close to Daedalus Rock, site of the sinking of HMS Daedalus (1811).
Famous quotes containing the words basses, reef and/or lighthouse:
“Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders watching, felt
The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Striking his former happiness against the reef of justice he has perished unwept for and unseen.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths; it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)