Photo, Paul, Penzance.
THE “BISHOP,” THE WESTERN OUTPOST OF ENGLAND.
This tower marks a treacherous reef, rising from the depths of the Atlantic off the Scilly Islands. Its slim proportions are familiar to Transatlantic passengers.
The south-western extremity of England, however, is far more to be dreaded than the south-eastern. Here Nature mixed land and water in an inextricable maze during her moulding process. Deep, tortuous, wide channels separate rugged granite islets, while long, ugly ridges creep stealthily out to sea beneath the pall of water, ready to trap the unsuspecting vessel which ventures too closely. If one were to take a map of this part of the country, were to dig one leg of a compass into the Lizard Head, stretching the other so as to reach the Eddystone light, and then were to describe a circle, the enclosed space would contain more famous sea-rock lights than a similar area on any other part of the globe. Within its circumference there would be the Eddystone, Bishop Rock, Wolf, and Longships, each of which lifts its cupola above a wave-swept ledge of rocks.
The need for an adequate indication of the Scillies was felt long before the Eddystone gained its ill fame. These scattered masses of granite, numbering about 140 in all, break up the expanse of the Atlantic about twenty miles south-west of the Cornish mainland. Now, the maritime traffic flowing in and out of the English Channel is divided into two broad classes—the coastal and the oversea trade respectively. The former is able to creep through the dangerous channel separating the Scillies from the mainland, but the latter has to make a détour to the south. One fringe of the broken cluster is as dangerous as the other, so that both streams of trade demand protection.
On the south side the knots dot the sea in all directions. They are mere black specks, many only revealing themselves at lowest tides; others do not betray their existence even then. The outermost ledge is the Bishop Rock, where disasters have been fearful and numerous. One of the most terrible catastrophes on record happened here, when three vessels of Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s fleet went to pieces in the year 1707, and dragged 2,000 men down with them, including the Admiral himself. In more recent times, some two or three years ago, the Atlantic transport liner Minnehaha dragged her lumbering body over the selfsame attenuated rampart, and was badly damaged before she could be rescued. As may be supposed, in days gone by the awful character of the coast brought prosperity to the inhabitants of Cornwall, who reaped rich harvests from the inhuman practice of wrecking, in which horrible work the Scilly Islanders were easily pre-eminent and more successful, since they held the outer lines upon which the majority of ships came to grief.
In the forties of last century it was decided that this graveyard should be marked, but there was one great difficulty. This was the exposure of the low-lying rock to some 4,000 miles of open Atlantic, where the rollers rise and fall with a force that turns the waters for miles around into a seething maelstrom of foam and surf. The aspect presented at this spot during a stiff south-westerly or westerly gale is terrifying in the extreme, and it is not surprising that approaching vessels stand so far off that the tower is often barely discernible against the background of cloud and banks of mist caused by the spray hurled into the air from the breakers smashing on the rocks.
