The Eddystone is the name of the highest summit of a reef of rocks which lie in deep water about fourteen miles to the south-west of Plymouth harbour. As they are in a line with Lizard Head, in Cornwall, and Start Point, in Devonshire, they are not only in the track of vessels bound for the great Devonian seaport, but of vessels coasting up and down the English Channel. At high water they are barely visible, and their position could only be told by the waves which eddy and seethe above them; at low water several low, broken, and dismal-looking ridges of gneiss become conspicuous. When the wind blows from the south-west, they are the centre of “a hell of waters,” and no ship involved in the vortex could hope to escape destruction.
It may readily be conceived that so perilous a reef, when unprotected by any beacon, was a source of deep alarm to the mariner, who, to give it the widest possible berth, was accustomed to enter the Channel in a much more southerly latitude than is now done. But in avoiding Scylla he often fell into Charybdis, and hence the numerous wrecks which occurred on the French coast, and more particularly upon the dangerous rocks surrounding the islands of Jersey, Guernsey, and Alderney.
The erection of a lighthouse upon the Eddystone was, therefore, a matter of national concern; yet no one could be found to undertake a task whose accomplishment nature seemed to have rendered impossible, until Henry Winstanley, a country gentleman of Littleberry, in Essex, chivalrously came forward in the year 1696, and having obtained the necessary legal powers, proceeded to carry his design into execution. This same Winstanley was one of those eccentric geniuses who find a pleasure in mystifying their friends, and in investing their daily life with an air of legerdemain. He adapted science to practical jokes with an ingenuity which, we think, has never been surpassed. If a guest in his bedroom kicked an old slipper out of his way, immediately a ghost started from the floor. If, in another, he threw himself into a chair, it suddenly flung out its two arms, and held him fast as a prisoner. Or if in the garden he retired into an arbour, and rested on a particular seat, he was straightway set afloat in the middle of the adjoining canal.
To the native eccentricity of the man, it has been justly remarked, may be ascribed the fantastical character of the first Eddystone Lighthouse. Its erection was begun in 1696. The first summer—and it was only in summer the work could be carried on—was occupied in making twelve holes in the rock, and fastening as many irons in them, to serve as the superstructure.[25] The task progressed but slowly, for, as Winstanley himself relates, though it was summer, the weather would at times prove of such terrible violence, that for ten or fourteen days together the sea would so rage about the rocks—agitated by out-winds and the inrush of the ground-swell from the main ocean—as to mount and leap upwards some two hundred feet, completely burying the works, and preventing all approach to them.
The second summer was spent in constructing a solid round pillar twelve feet high and fourteen feet in diameter. In the third year the pillar was enlarged two feet at the base, and the edifice carried up to a height of sixty feet. “Being all finished,” says the engineer, “with the lantern, and all the rooms that were in it, we ventured to lodge there soon after midsummer, for the greater dispatch of the work. But the first night the weather came bad, and so continued, that it was eleven days before any boats could come near us again; and not being acquainted with the height of the sea’s rising, we were almost drowned with wet, and our provisions in as bad a condition, though we worked night and day as much as possible to make shelter for ourselves. In this storm we lost some of our materials, although we did what we could to save them; but the boat then returning, we all left the house to be refreshed on shore: and as soon as the weather did permit we returned and finished all, and put up the light on the 14th November 1698; which being so late in the year, it was three days before Christmas before we had relief to go on shore again, and were almost at the last extremity for want of provisions; but, by good Providence, then two boats came with provisions and the family that was to take care of the light; and so ended this year’s work.”
WINSTANLEY’S LIGHTHOUSE AT THE EDDYSTONE.