CHAPTER X.

THE LIGHTHOUSE AND ITS HISTORY.

The Lighthouse—Our most noted one in Danger—The Eddystone Undermined—The Ancient History of Lighthouses—The Pharos of Alexandria—Roman Light Towers at Boulogne and Dover—Fire-beacons and Pitch-pots—The Tower of Cordouan—The First Eddystone Lighthouse—Winstanley and his Eccentricities—Difficulties of Building his Wooden Structure—Resembles a Pagoda—The Structure Swept Away with its Inventor—Another Silk Mercer in the Field—Rudyerd’s Lighthouse—Built of Wood—Stood for Fifty Years—Creditable Action of Louis XIV.—Lighthouse Keeper alone with a Corpse—The Horrors of a Month—Rudyerd’s Tower destroyed by Fire—Smeaton’s Early History—Employed to Build the Present Eddystone—Resolves on a Stone Tower—Employment of “Dove-tailing” in Masonry—Difficulties of Landing on the Rock—Peril incurred by the Workmen—The First Season’s Work—Smeaton always in the Post of Danger—Watching the Rock from Plymouth Hoe—The Last Season—Vibrations of the Tower in a Storm—Has Stood for 120 Years—Joy of the Mariner when “The Eddystone’s in Sight!”—Lights in the English Channel.

[Illustration]

Round the history of ships and shipping interests innumerable subjects intertwine. But for the good ship, we should not need coast fortifications, grand breakwaters, and artificial harbours, lighthouses, lifeboats, and coast-guard organisations. Just as England stands pre-eminent on the sea, so in all subsidiary points connected therewith she is fully represented. To the lighthouse and its history attention is now invited.

Not long since many an anxious eye was turned Channelwards from Plymouth Hoe towards that group of rocks, on one of which the famous Eddystone Light stood—and happily, still stands—for the light that should have illumined the stormy waters was apparently quenched. Not till morning dawn had nearly come was a re-assuring glimmer noted in the lantern of that famed Pharos of our coasts. And there was good reason for anxiety, although the immediate occasion was a mere temporary derangement of the lighting apparatus: for the report had spread that Smeaton’s greatest architectural triumph had collapsed before the power of the sea. One trembles to think what that might have meant, not merely to its few inhabitants, but to scores of sailors and owners. “Happily,” said one of our leading journals, “the Eddystone is still safe, despite the terrible effects of winds and waves, and the serious weakness of its own foundations, which was discovered a few years ago. For the tower which lights the way of the sailor into Plymouth Sound is, after all, not so secure a structure as could be desired. Built of solid masonry and with immense skill, by the clever architect from Hull who designed and carried out the work, it had yet to trust for its foundation to the rock upon which it stood. Should that give way the stone-work of the edifice might be strong enough, and yet some day fall into hopeless ruin. Strange to say, this very weakness has been self-revealed. The rock upon which the lighthouse stands, and which, of the twenty-three that comprise the group, is most exposed to the action of the sea, has been so violently attacked by what Ovid calls the ‘insane waters’ as to have become very seriously undermined. Gradually the waves have cut away the foundations of the stone, rising now and then against the lighthouse, and pressing against the structure with such force as to make the building itself serve the turn of a crowbar, and so, little by little, creating fissures in the foundations, and gradually preparing the way to the end.” Many attempts have been made to obviate these evils by the removal of rock which it was supposed acted as a lever to the water, and by other means: but in vain. At length the Board of Trinity House finding their efforts futile, determined to erect another lighthouse. Meantime, a light-ship has been provided, which, in case of accident to Smeaton’s tower, will be moored in the neighbourhood. A larger building is now in course of erection on an adjacent rock, which affords a more durable foundation and is less exposed to the merciless waves. It will be nearly double the height of the older structure, which was seventy-two feet high, and is being built on a principle of dovetailing, which, it is hoped and believed, will secure it against the worst fury of the sea. Think what that fury is sometimes, gentle reader! At the Skerryvore Rock they have an apparatus for registering the power of the waves per square foot surface; once recently it registered _three tons_ to the foot!

The most noted lighthouse in the world was undoubtedly the Pharos of Alexandria, named from the island on which it stood. The French, Italians, and Spaniards to-day use the term almost in its original purity: thus, French for lighthouse, _phare_; Italian and Spanish, _faro_. It was commenced by the first Ptolemy, and finished about 280 B.C., the workmanship, according to all accounts, being superb. This tower of white stone was 400 feet high. It is stated by Josephus that the light, which was always kept burning on its top at night, was visible over forty miles. It is believed to have been destroyed by an earthquake, though the date of its destruction is unknown.

The Romans were the first to erect anything approaching a Pharos, or lighthouse, on our coasts. Beacon fires may have been occasionally used before; the conquerors made the matter an organised affair. On either side the Channel, at Boulogne and Dover, structures of no mean altitude were raised for this purpose. That at Boulogne is supposed to have been erected by Caligula; all vestiges of it have passed away. It was originally called _Turris Ardens_, afterwards corrupted to the _Tour d’Ordre_. From a description left by Claude Châtillon, engineer to Henry IV., it appears that it was built about a stone’s throw from the edge of the cliff, above and overlooking the high tower and the castle. Its form was octagonal, with a base 192 feet in circumference. It was built of grey stone with thin red bricks between. That at Dover still exists. It occupies the highest point of the lofty rock on which the famous castle is built. This Pharos was also octagonal in outward form, being square within. It is 33 feet in diameter, and formerly about 72 feet high. On the summit three holes on the three exterior sides indicate their purposes, both for look-out and for exhibiting a light seawards.

Long after, and indeed almost down to our days, fire-beacons were far more common on exposed parts of our coasts than lighthouses. “The first idea of a lighthouse,” said Faraday, “is the candle in the cottage window, guiding the husband across the water or the pathless moor.” Lambarde says of the lights shown along the coast that, “Before the time of Edward III., they were made of great stacks of wood; but about the eleventh yeere of his raigne it was ordained that in our shyre (Kent) they should be high standards with their pitchpots.” Such were long used.

Lighthouses in these days differ greatly in material and mode of construction. Stone, brick, cast and wrought iron, and even wood, are used, according to the necessities of the case, or the lacks of the special locality where they are placed. In the case of some iron lighthouses they are literally screwed into the rock or hard ground. Seventy of this class of structures now exist in the United States.

[Illustration: THE TOWER OF CORDOUAN.]

One of the most remarkable early lighthouses is the Tower of Cordouan, situated on a ledge of rocks at the mouth of the Garonne, which empties into the Bay of Biscay. It was commenced in 1584, and completed in 1610, by Louis de Foix.

The ledge is about 3,000 feet long and 1,500 feet broad, and is bare at low water. It is surrounded by detached rocks, upon which the sea breaks with terrific violence. There is but one place of access, which is a passage 300 feet wide, where there are no rocks, and which leads to within 600 feet of the tower. The tower was a circular cone, rising from its rocky base to a height of 162 feet. It is now shorter. The apartments of the tower are highly ornamented, consisting of four storeys, all of different orders of architecture, and adorned with busts and statues of Kings of France and heathen gods. The basement, or lower storey, appears to have been intended as a store-room; the second storey is called the “King’s apartments;” the third is a chapel; and the fourth consists of a dome supported by columns, a kind of lower lantern; above this was originally a lantern formed of a stone dome and eight columns. In the upper lantern a fire of oak wood was kept burning for about a hundred years, when, in 1717, the fire having weakened the stone supports by calcining them, the upper lantern was taken down, and the light was kept up in the lower lantern. As it did not show well there, an iron lantern was erected in 1727 above this, in the place of the old stone lantern, and coal was then used for fuel instead of wood.

The following history of the Eddystone is largely derived from one of Mr. Samuel Smiles’ graphic and learned works.(52)

In 1696, Mr. Henry Winstanley (a mercer and country gentleman), of Littlebury, in the county of Essex, obtained the necessary powers to erect a lighthouse on the Eddystone. That gentleman seems to have possessed a curious mechanical genius, which first displayed itself in devising sundry practical jokes for the entertainment of his guests. Smeaton tells us that in one room there lay an old slipper, which, if a kick was given it, immediately raised a ghost from the floor; in another the visitor sat down upon a chair, which suddenly threw out two arms and held him a fast prisoner; whilst, in the garden, if he sought the shelter of an arbour, and sat down upon a particular seat, he was straightway set afloat in the middle of the adjoining canal. These tricks must have rendered the house at Littlebury a somewhat exciting residence for the uninitiated guest. The amateur inventor exercised the same genius, to a certain extent, for the entertainment of the inhabitants of the metropolis, and at Hyde Park Corner he erected a variety of _jets d’eau_, known by the name of Winstanley’s Waterworks, which he exhibited at stated times at a shilling a head.

This whimsicality of the man in some measure accounts for the oddity of the wooden building erected by him on the Eddystone Rock; and it is matter of surprise that it should have stood the severe weather of the English Channel for several seasons. The building was begun in the year 1696, and finished in four years. It must necessarily have been a work attended with great difficulty as well as danger, as operations could only be carried on during fine weather, when the sea was comparatively smooth. The first summer was wholly spent in making twelve holes in the rock, and fastening twelve irons in them, by which to hold fast the superstructure. “Even in summer,” Winstanley says, “the weather would at times prove so bad that for ten or fourteen days together the sea would be so raging about these rocks, caused by out-winds and the running of the ground seas coming from the main ocean, that although the weather should seem and be most calm in other places, yet here it would mount and fly more than two hundred feet, as has been so found since there was lodgment on the place, and therefore all our works were constantly buried at those times, and exposed to the mercy of the seas.”

The second summer was spent in making a solid pillar, twelve feet high and fourteen feet in diameter, on which to build the lighthouse. In the third year all the upper work was erected to the vane, which was eighty feet above the foundation. In the midsummer of that year Winstanley ventured to take up his lodging with the workmen in the lighthouse; but a storm arose, and eleven days passed before any boats could come near them. During that period the sea washed in upon Winstanley and his companions, wetting all their clothing and provisions, and carrying off many of their materials. By the time the boats could land, the party were reduced almost to their last crust; but, happily, the building stood, apparently firm. Finally, the light was exhibited on the summit of the building, on the 14th of November, 1698.

The fourth year was occupied in strengthening the building round the foundations, making all solid nearly to a height of twenty feet, and also in raising the upper part of the lighthouse forty feet, to keep it well out of the wash of the sea. This timber erection, when finished, somewhat resembled a Chinese pagoda, with open galleries and numerous fantastic projections. The main gallery, under the light, was so wide and open that an old gentleman who remembered both Winstanley and his lighthouse, afterwards told Smeaton that it was possible for a six-oared boat to be lifted up on a wave and driven clear through the open gallery into the sea on the other side. In the perspective print of the lighthouse, published by the architect after its erection, he complacently represented himself as fishing out of the kitchen window!

[Illustration: WINSTANLEY’S LIGHTHOUSE.]

When Winstanley had brought his work to completion, he is said to have expressed himself so satisfied as to its strength that he only wished he might be there in the fiercest storm that ever blew. In this wish he was not disappointed, though the result was the reverse entirely of the builder’s anticipations. In November, 1703, Winstanley went off to the lighthouse to superintend some repairs which had become necessary, and he was still in the place with the light-keepers, when, on the night of the 26th, a storm of unparalleled fury burst along the coast. As day broke on the morning of the 27th, people on shore anxiously looked in the direction of the rock to see if Winstanley’s structure had withstood the fury of the gale, but not a vestige of it remained. The lighthouse and its builder had been swept completely away.

The building had, in fact, been deficient in every element of stability, and its form was such as to render it peculiarly liable to damage from the violence both of wind and water. “Nevertheless,” as Smeaton generously observes, “it was no small degree of heroic merit in Winstanley to undertake a piece of work which had before been deemed impracticable, and, by the success which attended his endeavours, to show mankind that the erection of such a work was not in itself a thing of that kind.” He may, indeed, be said to have paved the way for the more successful enterprise of Smeaton himself; and its failure was not without its influence in inducing that great mechanic to exercise the care which he did, in devising a structure that should withstand the most violent sea on the south coast. Shortly after Winstanley’s lighthouse had been swept away, the _Winchelsea_, a richly laden homeward-bound Virginian, was wrecked on the Eddystone Rock, and almost every soul on board perished; so that the erection of a lighthouse upon the dangerous reef remained as much a necessity as ever.

[Illustration: RUDYERD’S LIGHTHOUSE.]

Mr. Smiles graphically describes the coming architect of the period. He did not, however, come from the class of architects or builders, or even of mechanics; and as for the class of engineers, it had not even yet sprung into existence. The projector of the next lighthouse for the Eddystone was again a London mercer, who kept a silk shop on Ludgate Hill. John Rudyerd—for such was his name—was, however, a man of unquestionable genius, and possessed of much force of character. He was the son of a Cornish labourer, whom nobody would employ—his character was so bad; and the rest of the family were no better, being looked upon in their neighbourhood as “a worthless set of ragged beggars.” John seems to have been the one sound chick in the whole brood. He had a naturally clear head and honest heart, and succeeded in withstanding the bad example of his family. When his brothers went out pilfering, he refused to accompany them, and hence they regarded him as sullen and obstinate. They ill-used him, and he ran away. Fortunately he succeeded in getting into the service of a gentleman at Plymouth, who saw something promising in his appearance. The boy conducted himself so well in the capacity of a servant, that he was allowed to learn reading, writing, and accounts; and he proved so quick and intelligent, that his kind master eventually placed him in a situation where his talents could have better scope for exercise than in his service, and he succeeded in thus laying the foundation of the young man’s success in life.

We are not informed of the steps by which Rudyerd marked his way upward, until we find him called from his silk-mercer’s shop to undertake the rebuilding of the Eddystone Lighthouse. But it is probable that by this time he had become well known for his mechanical skill in design, if not in construction, as well as for his thoroughly practical and reliable character as a man of business; and that for these reasons, amongst others, he was selected to conduct this difficult and responsible undertaking.

After the lapse of about three years from the destruction of Winstanley’s fabric, the Brothers of the Trinity, in 1706, obtained an Act of Parliament enabling them to rebuild the lighthouse, with power to grant a lease to the undertaker. It was taken by one Captain Lovet for a period of ninety-nine years, and he it was that found out and employed Rudyerd. His design of the new structure was simple but masterly. He selected the form that offered the least possible resistance to the force of the winds and the waves, avoiding the open galleries and projections of his predecessor. Instead of a polygon he chose a cone for the outline of his building, and he carried up the elevation in that form. In the practical execution of the work he was assisted by two shipwrights from the king’s yard at Woolwich, who worked with him during the whole time he was occupied in the erection.

The main defect of the lighthouse consisted of the faultiness of the material of which it was built; for, like Winstanley’s, it was of wood. The means employed to fix the work to its foundation proved quite efficient; dove-tailed holes were cut out of the rock, into which strong iron bolts or branches were keyed, and the interstices were afterwards filled with molten pewter. To these branches were firmly fixed a crown of squared oak balks, across these a set of shorter balks, and so on till a basement of solid wood was raised, the whole being firmly fitted and tied together with tre-nails and screw-bolts. At the same time, to increase the weight and vertical pressure of the building, and thereby present a greater resistance to any disturbing forces, Rudyerd introduced numerous courses of Cornish moorstone, as well jointed as possible, and cramped with iron. It is not necessary to follow the details of the construction further than to state that outside the solid timber and stone courses strong upright timbers were fixed, and carried up as the work proceeded, binding the whole firmly together. Within these upright timbers the rooms of the lighthouse were formed, the floor of the lowest—the store-room—being situated twenty-seven feet above the highest side of the rock. The upper part of the building comprehended four rooms, one above another, chiefly formed by the upright outside timbers, scarfed—that is, the ends overlapping, and firmly fastened together. The whole building was, indeed, an admirable piece of ship-carpentry, excepting only the moorstone, which was merely introduced, as it were, by way of ballast. The outer timbers were tightly caulked with oakum, like a ship, and the whole was payed over with pitch. Upon the roof of the main column Rudyerd fixed his lantern, which was lit by candles, seventy feet above the highest side of the foundation, which was of a sloping form. From its lowest side to the summit of the ball fixed on the top of the building was ninety-two feet, the timber column resting on a base of twenty-three feet four inches. “The whole building,” says Smeaton, “consisted of a simple figure, being an elegant frustum of a cone, unbroken by any projecting ornaments, or anything whereon the violence of the storm could lay hold.” The structure was completely finished in 1709, though the light was exhibited in the lantern as early as the 28th of July, 1706.

That the building erected by Rudyerd was, on the whole, well adapted for the purpose for which it was intended, was proved by the fact that it served as a lighthouse for ships navigating the English Channel for nearly fifty years. The lighthouse was at first attended by only two men. It happened, however, that one of the keepers was taken ill and died, and only one man remained to do the work. He signalled for assistance, but the weather prevented any boat from reaching the rock for nearly a month. What, then, was the surviving man to do with the dead body of his comrade? The thought struck him that if he threw it into the sea, he might be charged with murder. He determined, therefore, to keep the corpse in the lighthouse until a boat should come off from the shore. At last a boat