Before we quit the subject of Rudyerd’s Lighthouse, we must refer to another romantic narrative of which it was the scene.
For some years after its establishment it was attended by two custodians only, whose duty it was to keep the windows of the lantern clean, and who were on guard for four hours alternately. Each at the conclusion of his watch was bound to call the other, and before he retired, to see that his successor took up his proper post. It happened, however, that, on one occasion, when the keeper on duty went to call his colleague, he found him—dead. Immediately he hoisted his flag on the balcony, from whence it was visible at the Rame Head, near Plymouth, and waited eagerly for the assistance this signal usually brought. Unhappily, the weather became so boisterous that no boat could put out from the shore, and the lonely keeper was reduced to the miserable companionship of a dead body. It is difficult to conceive of any situation more wretched or alarming; he dared not dispose of the corpse; for if he flung it into the waves—his only means of getting rid of it—he justly feared that he might be charged with the murder of his companion; and yet, each day that it remained, his own life was endangered by its extremely offensive condition. For nearly a month this long agony lasted. When, at last, a boat succeeded in reaching the rock, the building was found to be filled with an intolerable odour, and the corpse in such a condition that it was impossible to remove it to Plymouth for interment; it was therefore consigned to the deep.
This incident led to the employment thenceforward of three keepers, so that in case one of them died, or was sick, there might always be two on duty.
The value of a lighthouse on the Eddystone had been so abundantly proved, and, owing to the rapidly increasing commerce of the kingdom, its necessity was now so absolute, that the authorities resolved to lose no time in erecting a new one in the place of Rudyerd’s unfortunate structure.
As on the two previous occasions, says Mr. Smiles, when, first, a country gentleman, and, next, a London mercer, had been called upon to undertake this difficult work, the person now appointed was neither a builder, an architect, nor an engineer, but a mathematical instrument maker. John Smeaton, however—to whom the difficult task was entrusted—had already given proof of a signal capacity for mechanics, and in the general estimation of scientific men no better or more fortunate selection could possibly have been made.
At this time Smeaton was only thirty-two years of age, having been born at Ansthorpe Lodge, near Leeds, on the 8th of June 1724. His father was a respectable attorney, but, from his earliest youth, John Smeaton had exhibited a natural predisposition for the engineer’s business. In truth, he was a mechanic born; in his childhood his playthings were mechanical tools; and before his sixth year he had designed a windmill and the model of a pump. He was sent to school at Leeds, but seems to have made no progress in any other branches than geometry and arithmetic. He occupied his holidays with mechanical pursuits, and on one occasion constructed a forcing-pump, which exhausted all the water in his father’s fish-pond. At the age of fourteen he was an adept at smithery and turnery. He forged his iron and steel, and melted his metal. Tools had he in abundance, and of every kind, for working in metals, wood, or ivory. What was to be done with such a lad? His father wished him to be a “gentleman,” and follow his own profession; Smeaton was content to become an “operative,” and apprenticed himself to a mathematical instrument maker. He soon attained to such proficiency, that, in 1750, he commenced business on his own account. In 1751 he invented a machine to measure a ship’s way at sea, as also a compass of peculiar construction. Enlarging the range of his studies, he submitted to the Royal Society, in 1752, some improvements which he had contrived in the air-pump, and experiments on the natural power of water and wind to turn mills and other machines dependent on circular motion.
Such was the man—ingenious, able, earnest, patient, and persevering—to whom was entrusted the erection of the third lighthouse upon the Eddystone rock.
On examining into the nature of the work he was required to undertake, his first conclusion was, that both Winstanley’s and Rudyerd’s lighthouses had been deficient in want of weight, and he announced it as his intention to build a structure of such solidity that the sea should give way to the lighthouse, and not the lighthouse to the sea. He therefore resolved to build it of stone.