vintage spot light for a narrowboat.

Hi Hiver for the people that have been following the bits I have posted for a while you may realise I am quite good friends with Hive account@scubahead and Hive account@millycf1976 who recently swapped life in the Philipines where I first met them for the life of aquatic gypsies on a small Narrowboat on the canals of the UK. Well, a week or so ago I went up for a visit and give Hive account@scubahead a hand doing a bit of maintenance on the engine, and one thing I noticed was that the lighting on the front of their boat was a little lacking for the many dark wet tunnels they will be going through. Many narrowboats have quite posh brass searchlights on the front to help see in the dark but this wouldn't really be in keeping with the Little Badger. My first thoughts went to a pair of Cibie Oscar rally lights but while bright also not in keeping.

So I had a dig around on some of my old auto-jumble websites and came up with this.

It's an old American spotlight of the type you would see on police cars and patrol boats in the 50s.

Made by the Unity Manufacturing company of Chicago it just perfect They were originally designed for use on boats during World War II. They were quickly utilized for the police and fire service in the States for fitting on vehicles. The company is still going strong today making vintage lights mostly to order. It really is great to see a company still producing traditional high-quality parts.

Photo from the Unity Lighting company web page
The light itself is quite heavy and well chromed as you would expect from something of that era. The only small downside is I have had to rewire it as whoever removed it cut the wires very short but that really was not a big job, and it's all ready to fit on my next visit.

And let there be light just a quick test to make sure everything works.