BY FREDERICK A. TALBOT.
It is doubtful whether the name of any lighthouse is so familiar throughout the English-speaking world as the "Eddystone." Certainly no other "pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day," can offer so romantic a story of dogged engineering perseverance, of heartrending disappointments, disaster, blasted hopes, and brilliant success.
Standing out in the English Channel, about sixty miles east of the Lizard, is a straggling ridge of rocks which stretches for hundreds of yards across the marine thoroughfare, and also obstructs the western approach to Plymouth Harbor. But at a point some nine and a half miles south of Rame Head on the mainland the reef rises somewhat abruptly to the surface, so that at low-water two or three ugly granite knots are bared, which tell only too poignantly the complete destruction they could wreak upon a vessel which had the temerity or the ill luck to scrape over them at high-tide. Even in the calmest weather the sea curls and eddies viciously around these stones; hence the name "Eddystone," is derived….
As British overseas traffic expanded, the idea of indicating the spot for the benefit of vessels was discust. The first practical suggestion was put forward about the year 1664, but thirty-two years elapsed before any attempt was made to reduce theory to practise. Then an eccentric English country gentleman, Henry Winstanley, who dabbled in mechanical engineering upon unorthodox lines, came forward and offered to build a lighthouse upon the terrible rocks. Those who knew this ambitious amateur were dubious of his success, and wondered what manifestation his eccentricity would assume on this occasion. Nor was their scepticism entirely misplaced. Winstanley raised the most fantastic lighthouse which has ever been known, and which would have been more at home in a Chinese cemetery than in the English Channel. It was wrought in wood and most lavishly embellished with carvings and gilding.
Four years were occupied in its construction, and the tower was anchored to the rock by means of long, heavy irons. The light, merely a flicker, flashed out from this tower in 1699, and for the first time the proximity of the Eddystones was indicated all around the horizon by night. Winstanley's critics were rather free in expressing their opinion that the tower would come down with the first sou'wester, but the eccentric builder was so intensely proud of his invention as to venture the statement that it would resist the fiercest gale that ever blew, and, when such did occur, he hoped that he might be in the tower at the time.
Fate gratified his wish, for while he was on the rock in the year 1703 one of the most terrible tempests that ever have assailed the coasts of Britain gript the structure, tore it up by the roots, and hurled it into the Channel, where it was battered to pieces, its designer and five keepers going down with the wreck. When the inhabitants of Plymouth, having vainly scanned the horizon for a sign of the tower on the following morning, put off to the rock to investigate, they found only the bent and twisted iron rods by which the tower had been held in position projecting mournfully into the air from the rock-face.
Shortly after the demolition of the tower, the reef, as if enraged at having been denied a number of victims owing to the existence of the warning light, trapt the "Winchelsea" as she was swinging up Channel, and smashed her to atoms, with enormous loss of life.
Altho the first attempt to conquer the Eddystone had terminated so disastrously, it was not long before another effort was made to mark the reef. The builder this time was a Cornish laborer's son, John Rudyerd, who had established himself in business on Ludgate Hill as a silk mercer. In his youth he had studied civil engineering, but his friends had small opinion of his abilities in this craft. However, he attacked the problem boldly, and, altho his tower was a plain, business-looking structure, it would have been impossible to conceive a design capable of meeting the peculiar requirements of the situation more efficiently. It "was a cone, wrought in timber, built upon a stone and wood foundation anchored to the rock, and of great weight and strength. The top of the cone was cut off to permit the lantern to be set in position. The result was that externally the tower resembled the trunk of an oak tree, and appeared to be just about as strong. It offered the minimum of resistance to the waves, which, tumbling upon the ledge, rose and curled around the tapering form without starting a timber.
For forty years Rudyerd's structure defied the elements, and probably would have been standing to this day had it not possest one weak point.
It was built of wood instead of stone. Consequently, when a fire broke out in the lantern on December 4, 1755, the flames, fanned by the breeze, rapidly made their way downward.