Whatever may be the truth regarding the foundations of the Eddystone, the old lighthouse has done good work for considerably over a century. Sometimes when the sea rolls in with more than usual fury the lighthouse is enveloped in spray, and when struck by a strong wave, the central portion shoots up the perpendicular shaft and leaps quite over [pg 170]the lantern, but soon its brilliant light shines forth again, a warning and a guide to the mariner. When a wave hurls itself upon the lighthouse, the report of the shock is like a cannon, and a tremor passes through the building. At first the lighthouse-keepers were afraid for their lives. The year after the completion of the tower, a terrible storm raged, the sea dashing over the lighthouse so that those inside dare not open the lantern door, nor any other, for even an instant. A man who visited the rock after some similar storm wrote to Mr. Jessop, “The house did shake as if a man had been up in a great tree. The old men were almost frightened out of their lives, wishing they had never seen the place, and cursing those that first persuaded them to go there. The fear seized them in the back, but rubbing them with oil of turpentine gave them relief.” The men, however, soon became used to the life; and Smeaton mentions the case of one of them who was even accustomed to give up to his companions his turn for going on shore.
PORTRAIT OF SMEATON.
“Many a heart,” says Mr. Smiles, “has leapt with gladness at the cry of ‘The Eddystone in sight!’ sung out from the maintop. Homeward-bound ships, from far-off ports, no longer avoid the dreaded rock, but eagerly run for its light as the harbinger of safety. It might even seem as if Providence had placed the reef so far out at sea as the foundation for a beacon such as this, leaving it to man’s skill and labour to finish His work. On entering the English Channel from the west and the south, the cautious navigator feels [pg 171]his way by early soundings on the great bank which extends from the Channel into the Atlantic, and these are repeated at fixed intervals until land is in sight. Every fathom nearer shore increases a ship’s risks, especially on dark nights. The men are on the look-out, peering anxiously into the dark, straining the eye to catch the glimmer of a light, and when it is known that ‘the Eddystone is in sight!’ a thrill runs through the ship, which can only be appreciated by those who have felt or witnessed it after long months of weary voyaging.
INTERIOR OF THE LIGHT-CHAMBER OF THE EDDYSTONE.
“By means of similar lights, of different arrangements and of various colours, fixed and revolving, erected upon rocks, islands, and headlands, the British Channel is now lit up along its whole extent, and is as safe to navigate in the darkest night as in the brightest [pg 172]sunshine. The chief danger is from fogs which alike hide the lights by night and the land by day. Some of the homeward-bound ships entering the Channel from North American ports first make the St. Agnes Light, on the Scilly Isles, revolving once a minute, at a height of 138 feet above high water. But most Atlantic ships keep further south in consequence of the nature of the soundings about the Scilly Isles; and hence they oftener make the Lizard Lights first, which are visible about twenty miles off.
“From this point the coast retires, and in the bend lie Falmouth (with a revolving light on St. Anthony’s Point), Fowey, the Looes, and Plymouth Sound and Harbour; the coast line again trending southward until it juts out into the sea, in the bold craggy bluffs of Bolt Head and Start Point, on the last of which is another house with two lights—one, revolving, for the Channel, and another, fixed, to direct vessels inshore clear of the Skerries Shoal. But between the Lizard and Start Point, which form the two extremities of this bend in the land of Cornwall and Devonshire, there lies the Eddystone Rock and Lighthouse, standing fourteen miles out from the shore, almost directly in front of Plymouth Sound and in the line of coasting vessels steaming or beating up Channel.
“On the south are seen the three Croquet Lights on the Jersey side; and on the north the two fixed lights on Portland Bill. The west is St. Catherine’s, a brilliant fixed light on the extreme south point of the Isle of Wight. Next are the lights exhibited on the Nab, and then the single fixed light exhibited on the Ower vessel. Beachy Head, on the same line, exhibits a powerful revolving light 285 feet above high water, its interval of greatest brilliancy occurring every two minutes. Then comes Dungeness, exhibiting a fixed red light of great power, situated at the extremity of the low point of Dungeness beach. Next are seen Folkestone, and then Dover Harbour Lights, whilst on the south are the flash light, recently stationed on the Verne Bank; and further up Channel, on the French coast, is seen the brilliant revolving light on Cape Grisnez. The Channel is passed with the two South Foreland Lights, one higher than the other, on the left; and the Downs are entered with the South Sandhead floating light on the right; and when the Gull and the North Sandhead floating lights have been passed on the one hand, and North Foreland on the other, then the Tongue, the Prince’s Channel, and the Girdler are passed.” The Nore Light passed, the navigation of the Thames commences.