Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science

by J. Hamilton Fyfe

This first Eddystone lighthouse was a strange, fantastic looking structure, deficient in every element of stability, and the wonder was not that it fell in pieces as it did, but that it was able to withstand so long the boisterous weather of the Channel. But if of little merit as an architect, Winstanley at least deserves respect, as Smeaton remarks, for the heroism he displayed in undertaking "a piece of work that before had been looked on as impossible."

For four years the Eddystone remained bare and untenanted, till, in the summer of 1706, the erection of a new lighthouse was commenced under the superintendence of John Rudyerd, by profession a silk-mercer in Ludgate Hill, but by natural genius an engineer of considerable merit. With such skill and energy did he apply himself to the work, that before two summers were over his tower was completed, and its friendly light beamed over the troubled waters and sunken crags. Rudyerd's lighthouse was entirely of wood, weighted at the base by a few courses of mason work, and 92 feet in height. In form, it was a smooth, solid cone of elegant simplicity, unbroken by any of those ornamental outworks, which offered the wind and sea so many points to lay hold of, in Winstanley's whimsical pagoda. Smeaton speaks of Rudyerd's tower as a masterly performance; and had it not been destroyed by fire, forty-six years after its erection, there seems little reason to suppose it might not have been standing to this day,—although no doubt the ravages of the worm in the wood would have demanded frequent repairs. On the 2d December 1755, some fishermen who happened to be on the beach very early in the morning preparing their nets, were startled by the sight of volumes of smoke issuing from the lighthouse. They instantly gave the alarm, and a boat was quickly manned for the relief of the sufferers. It did not reach the rock till about ten o'clock, and the fire had then been raging for eight hours. It was first discovered by the light-keeper upon watch who, going into the lantern about two o'clock in the morning to snuff the candles, found the place filled with smoke. He opened the door of the lantern into the balcony, and a mass of flame immediately burst from the inside of the cupola. He lost no time in seizing the buckets of water kept at hand, and dashing them over the fire, but without effect. His two companions were asleep, and it was some time before they heard his shouts for assistance. When at length they did bestir themselves, all the water in the house was exhausted. The light-keeper—an old man in his ninety-fourth year—urged them to replenish the buckets from the sea; but the difficulty of lowering the buckets to such a depth, and their confusion and terror at the sudden catastrophe and their impending fate, destroyed their presence of mind, and rendered them quite powerless. The old man did his best to prevent the advance of the flames; but, exhausted by the unavailing labour, and severely injured by the melting lead from the roof, he had to desist. As the fire spread from point to point, with rapid strides descending from the summit to the base, the poor wretches fled before it, retreating from room to room, till at last they were driven to seek shelter from the blazing timbers and red hot bars, in a cleft of the rock. There they were found by their preservers, crouching together half dead with suffering and fright. It was with the greatest difficulty that they were got into the boat; and they had no sooner reached the shore than one of them, crazed by the terrors he had undergone, ran away, and was never heard of more. The old man lingered on for a few days in great agony, and died from the injuries he had received.

Such was the fate of the second lighthouse on the Eddystone,—one element revenging, as it were, the conquest over another.

In spite of the fatality which seemed to attend these lighthouses, the lessees of the Eddystone—for it was then in private hands, and did not come into the hands of the Trinity House till many years after—resolved to make another attempt; and this time they selected as the architect one of the ablest professional men of the day, and with sagacious liberality, adopted his advice to build it of stone and granite.

Smeaton truly belonged to the class of heaven-born engineers. From his earliest years the bent of his genius unmistakably revealed itself. Before he was six years old, he one day terrified his parents by climbing to the top of a barn to fix up some contrivance he had put together, after the fashion of a windmill; and another time he constructed a pump that raised water, after watching some workmen sinking one. And as he grew older, his efforts took a more ambitious range, and were all equally remarkable for their originality and success. His father destined him for the bar; but his inclination for engineering was so irresistible, that he allowed him to resign all chance of the woolsack, and set up in business as a mathematical instrument maker. He gradually advanced to the profession of civil engineering,—which he was the first man in England to pursue, and which he may be said to have created.

It was in 1756 he commenced the construction of the great work which may be regarded as the monument of his fame. Having decided that his lighthouse should be of stone, the next point to be settled was its form. His thoughts, he tells us in his book, instinctively reverted to the analogy between a lighthouse shaft and the trunk of a stately oak. He remarked the spreading roots taking a broad, firm grip of the soil, the rise of the swelling base, gradually lessening in girth in a graceful curve, till a preparation being required for the support of the spreading boughs, a renewed swelling of diameter takes place; and he held that cutting off the branches we have, in the trunk of an oak, a type of such a lighthouse column as is best adapted to resist the influence of the winds and waves. Whether or not Smeaton arrived at the form of his lighthouse, which has since become the model for all others, from this fanciful analogy, its appearance rising from the rock presents a strong resemblance to a noble tree stripped of its boughs and foliage.

Smeaton commenced the undertaking by visiting the rock in the spring of 1756, accurately measuring its very irregular surface, and in order to ensure exactness in his plans, making a model of it. In the summer of the same year he prepared the foundation by cutting the surface of the rock in regular steps or trenches, into which the blocks of stone were to be dovetailed. The first stone was laid in June 1757, and the last in August 1759. Of that period there were only 431 days when it was possible to stand on the rock, and so small a portion even of these was available for carrying on the work, that it is calculated the building in reality occupied but six weeks. The whole was completed without the slightest accident to any one; and so well were all the arrangements made, that not a minute was lost by confusion or delay amongst the workmen.

The tower measures 86 feet in height, and 26 feet in diameter at the level of the first entire course, the diameter under the cornice being only 15 feet. The first twelve feet of the structure form a solid mass of masonry,—the blocks of stone being held together by means of stone joggles, dovetailed joints, and oaken tree-nails. All the floors of the edifice are arched; to counteract the possible outburst of which, Smeaton bound the courses of his stone work together by belts of iron chain, which, being set in grooves while in a heated state, by the application of hot lead, on cooling, of course, tightened their clasp on the tower. Throughout the whole work the greatest ingenuity is displayed in obtaining the greatest amount of resistance, and combining the two great principles of strength and weight,—technically speaking, cohesion and inertia.

On the 16th October 1759, the warning light once more, after an interval of four years, shone forth over the troubled waters from the dangerous rock; but it was but a feeble illumination at the best, for it came from only a group of tallow candles. It was better than nothing, certainly; but the exhibition of a few glimmering candles was but a paltry conclusion to so stupendous an undertaking. For many years, however, no stronger light gleamed from the tower, till, in 1807, when it passed from the hands of private proprietors into the charge of the Trinity House, the mutton dips were supplanted by Argand burners, with silvered copper reflectors.

Imperfect, however, as used to be the lighting apparatus, the Eddystone Beacon has always been a great boon to all those "that go down to the sea in great ships," and has robbed these perilous waters of much of their terror. We can readily sympathize with the exultation of the great engineer who reared it, when standing on the Hoe at Plymouth, he spent many an hour, with his telescope, watching the great swollen waves, in powerless fury, dash against his tower, and "fly up in a white column, enwrapping it like a sheet, rising at the least to double the height of the tower, and totally intercepting it from sight." It is now more than a hundred years since Smeaton's Lighthouse first rose upon the Eddystone; but, in spite of the many furious storms which have put its stability to rude and searching proof, it still lifts its head proudly over the waves, and shows no signs of failing strength.