It has served as the topic of many lines. I will give some not usually quoted, by John O'Keefe, which were set to music by Dr. Arnold:—
"In May fifteen hundred and eighty-eight,
Cries Philip, 'The English I'll humble;
I've taken it into my Majesty's pate,
And the lion, Oh! down he shall tumble.
The lords of the sea!' Then his sceptre he shook;
'I'll prove it all arrant bravado,
By Neptune! I'll sweep 'em all into a nook,
With th' Invincible Spanish Armado.'
"This fleet started out, and the winds they did blow;
Their guns made a terrible clatter.
Our noble Queen Bess, 'cos her wanted to know,
Quill'd her ruff, and cried, 'Pray what's the matter?'
'They say, my good Queen,' replies Howard so stout,
'The Spaniard has drawn his toledo.
Odds bobbins! he'll thump us, and kick us about,
With th' Invincible Spanish Armado.'
"The Lord Mayor of London, a very wise man,
What to do in the case vastly wondered.
Says the Queen, 'Send in fifty good ships, if you can,'
Says the Lord Mayor, 'I'll send you a hundred!'
Our fire ships soon struck every cannon all dumb,
For the Dons ran to Ave and Credo;
Don Medina roars out, 'Sure the foul fiend is come,
For th' Invincible Spanish Armado.'
"On Effingham's squadron, tho' all in abreast,
Like open-mouth'd curs they came bowling;
His sugar-plums finding they could not digest,
Away they ran yelping and howling.
When Britain's foe shall, all with envy agog,
In our Channel make such a tornado,
Huzza! my brave boys! we're still lusty to flog
An Invincible ... Armado."
And here the dotted line will allow of Gallic, Russian, or German to be inserted. Of Spanish there need be no fear. Spain is played out.
A fine bronze statue of Sir Francis by Boehm is on the Hoe, the traditional site of the bowling match, but it is only a replica of that at Tavistock, and lacks the fine bas-reliefs representing incidents in the life of Drake; among others, the game of bowls, and his burial at sea. On the Hoe is also a ridiculous tercentenary monument commemorative of the Armada, and the upper portion of Smeaton's Eddystone lighthouse.
This dangerous reef had occasioned so many wrecks and such loss of life, that Mr. Henry Winstanley, a gentleman of property in Essex, a self-taught mechanician, resolved to devote his attention and his money to the erection of a lighthouse upon the reef, called Eddystone probably because of the swirl of water about it. He commenced the erection in 1696, and completed it in four years. The structure was eminently picturesque, so much so that a local artist at Launceston thought he could not do better than make a painting of it to decorate a house there then in construction (Dockacre), and set it up as a portion of the chimney-piece. The edifice certainly was not calculated to withstand such seas as roll in the Channel, but Winstanley knew only that second-hand wash which flows over miles of mud on the Essex coast, which it submerges, but above which it cannot heap itself into billows.
Winstanley had implicit confidence in his work, and frequently expressed the wish that he might be in his lighthouse when tested by a severe storm from the west. He had his desire. One morning in November, 1703, he left the Barbican to superintend repairs. An old seaman standing there warned him that dirty weather was coming on. Nevertheless, strong in his confidence, he went. That night, whilst he remained at the lighthouse, a hurricane sprang up, and when morning broke no lighthouse was visible; the erection and its occupants had been swept away. Three years elapsed before another attempt was made to rear a beacon. At length a silk mercer of London, named Rudyard, undertook the work. He determined to imitate as closely as might be the trunk of a Scotch pine, and to give to wind and wave as little surface as possible on which to take effect. Winstanley's edifice had been polygonal; Rudyard's was to be circular. Commenced in 1706 and completed in 1709, entirely of timber, the shaft weathered the storms of nearly fifty years in safety, and might have defied them longer but that it was built of combustible materials. It caught fire on the 2nd December, 1755. The three keepers in it did their utmost to extinguish the flames, but their efforts were ineffectual. The lead wherewith it was roofed ran off in molten streams, and the men had to take refuge in a hole of the rock. When they were rescued one of the men went raving mad, broke away, and was never seen again. Another solemnly averred that some of the molten lead, as he stood looking up agape at the fire, had run down his throat as it spouted from the roof. He died within twelve days, and actually lodged within his stomach was found a mass of lead weighing nearly eight ounces. How he had lived so long was a marvel.
Twelve months were not suffered to pass before a third lighthouse was commenced—that of Smeaton. This was of stone, dovetailed together. It was commenced in June, 1757, and completed by October, 1759. This lighthouse might have lasted to the present, had it not been that the rocky foundation began to yield under the incessant beat of the waves.