The Book of the Ocean

by Ernest Ingersoll

The storm had abated at midnight, and when day dawned there was no further cause for alarm. The men were removed from the Trenton and provided with quarters on shore.

During the next few days the evidences of the great disaster could be seen on every side. In the harbor were the wrecks of four men-of-war: the Trenton, Vandalia, Adler, and Eber; and two others, the Nipsic and Olga, were hard and fast on the beach and were hauled off with great difficulty. The wrecks of ten sailing-vessels also lay upon the reefs. On shore, houses and trees were blown down, and the beach was strewn with wreckage from one end of the town to the other.

Ever since men began to go to sea lights have been placed on shore to guide them to a landing-place; but in early times these were nothing more than fires on headlands, kindled, perhaps, by the wives and children of the captain and his crew of neighbors, when these mariners were expected home. These friendly services became a little more systematic when merchants began to risk their property on the water; and on the shores of the Mediterranean, which we have found to be the cradle of civilized navigation and trade, harbor-beacons were erected in very early times as guides to a safe anchorage.

The giant statue known as the Colossus, at Rhodes, is supposed to have been used as a beacon and lighthouse, a fire burning in the palm of its uplifted colossal hand at night. Although the account of the Colossus is only a matter of guesswork, it is historically true that in those ages of ignorant heedlessness of the need of beacons, a lighthouse was built so grand in proportions, so enduring in character, that it became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and outlived all the others, save the Pyramids, by centuries, and in some ways has never been excelled by any similar structure in modern times, unless it be by our mammoth marble monument to Washington. This was the lighthouse built on the little island of Pharos by Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, two hundred and eighty years before Christ, to guide vessels into the harbor of Alexandria. From all descriptions, it must have closely resembled our Washington monument; for it was built of white stone, was square at the base, and tapered toward the apex. Open windows were near its top, through which the fire within could be seen for thirty miles by vessels at sea.

The destruction of these beacons in the general smash and ruin that seem to have overtaken the world when the Roman empire went to pieces is only indicative of the way the darkness of barbarism returned and enveloped the minds as well as the works of men, until light broke through the clouds again with the rise of organized sea-powers in Western Europe. Then beacons were gradually rebuilt, but in almost all cases by private hands—the feudal lords of coast estates, the master or authorities of sea-ports, the monks in monasteries near dangerous landings, and now and then the king at his principal port, setting up marks for steering by day and lighting fires on dark nights. Most of the latter were hardly more than tar-barrels, which would burn brightly in a gale, and the better class were towers of stonework, on top of which a mass of coal was ignited in an iron cage, and kept stirred into brightness by a watcher.

It was an easy matter to imitate such beacons, and wreckers would often set up false lights. Many a fearful tradition has come down of the doings of wreckers, not only in England and Spain, but in America and in the East. One of their tricks, when they saw a ship approaching in the evening, was to hang a lantern upon a horse’s neck, and let him graze, well-hobbled, along the beach. This would appear like the rocking of a lantern on a vessel at rest—what is called a riding or anchor light; and, deceived by this promise of a safe anchorage, the stranger would not discover that he had been cheated until his keel struck a reef or sandbar, and the pirates had begun their villainous attack. It is said to have been a device of this kind which caused the wreck in 1812, on the Carolina coast,—whose islands and lagoons are reputed to have been infested by such ruffians, there known as “bankers,”—of a vessel carrying the beautiful Theodosia Burr, daughter of Aaron Burr, and wife of Governor Alston of South Carolina. Her death at the hands of these men is illustrated on [page 172].

During the reign of Henry VIII of England, an association of mariners called, in short, the Guild of the Trinity was chartered and given various powers and privileges in connection with the newly instituted royal navy and dockyards. It encouraged coast-lights, and in 1573 Queen Elizabeth formally placed authority to erect and govern lighthouses and coast beacons in the hands of this corporation, and there it remains to this day; for its headquarters, Trinity House, on Tower Hill, in London, are a recognized office of the British government, answering to our Lighthouse Board.

It was not long before it encouraged the founding of a permanent light on Eddystone Shoals, a group of reefs near Plymouth, exceedingly dangerous because they lie precisely in the track of ships bound up or down the English Channel, yet almost invisible. Upon the mere standing-room afforded by the crest of this rock, Sir William Winstanley managed to erect, two hundred years ago, a tower of wood and iron trestle-work, bolted to its foundation and carrying a glass room or lantern containing a coal-grate, eighty feet above low-water mark. This was completed in 1698. One winter’s experience convinced him that it needed strengthening, and in 1699 a case of masonry was built about the tower, and made solid to the height of twenty feet, while the whole structure was increased to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. Then, it is related, Winstanley boasted that the sea had not strength enough to tear it down, and all England rejoiced in so noble a beacon; but we now know that the construction was faulty, in its large diameter, polygonal outline, excess of ornament, and lack of weight. While Sir William was within it making repairs, four years later, the memorable hurricane of November 20, 1703, swept the coast, and left scarcely a trace of the tower. Its value had been proved, however, and it was replaced, in 1706, by a straight-sided tower of oaken timbers, weighted in their lower courses by stone. This was designed by an engineer named Rudyerd, and lasted until burned down in 1755; and engineers say it was better for its place than was the round, solid-based stone tower of Smeaton that followed it, and became so celebrated. This was finished in three years, and in 1760 was lighted, not by a fire, as of old, but by candles—the first use of such an illuminant. This truly illustrious lighthouse remained until a few years ago, when it became so racked by the assaults of the sea as to be unsafe. It was then replaced by the one that stands there to-day, rivaling its magnificent neighbor on the Biscay shore opposite, the lighthouse of Carduan, which was built to support a bonfire of oak, but has remained to be lighted successively by oil-lamps, by gas-burners, and finally by electricity.

ENGRAVED BY R. C. COLLINS.