CHAPTER VI.
LIGHTHOUSES ON THE ENGLISH COAST.
We propose, in the present chapter, to glance at a few of the best known pharoses which illuminate our home-waters, but without observing any particular order. Our description of each will be brief, for it is needless to say that, as a rule, lighthouses closely resemble one another in their principles of construction as in their general arrangements, and that the differences between them are simply matters of detail.
Upon Needles Point, the westernmost extremity of the Isle of Wight, at an elevation of 474 feet, a lighthouse was erected early in the last century. Notwithstanding its great height, it is recorded that its windows were sometimes shattered by stones flung up by the mounting and raging billows.[46] It had ten Argand lamps, and the same number of plated reflectors; and its light, on clear and cloudless nights, was visible at a distance of eleven leagues. Seven hundred gallons of oil, we are told, were consumed annually; and in stormy nights the blaze attracted hundreds of small birds, which dashed themselves against the glass reflectors, and were killed.
NEEDLES LIGHTHOUSE.
Owing to its great elevation, however, this lighthouse was of little service in hazy and foggy weather. The Trinity House, therefore, in 1859, caused a new one to be constructed on the outer part of the farthest of the celebrated chalk rocks, called the Needles, which was previously cut down and levelled almost to the water’s edge. This lighthouse is about 109 feet in height from the base to the top of the ball, and possesses only one light, with three concentrated wicks, whose brilliancy, however, is so great that it can be seen fourteen miles at sea. The shades are alternately white and red. A fog bell is rung by mechanical agency during stormy weather; its sounds may be heard at a distance of five miles. The base of the building is 38 feet in diameter.