CHAPTER III.
THE LIGHTHOUSE OF THE HEAUX OF BREHAT.
A.D. 1836–1840.
One of the most important of the French lighthouses is that whose brilliant fixed light radiates nightly over the vast and dangerous space comprised between the coast of Brittany and the Roches-Douvres. In our opulent cities it would be considered a monument of the first rank, and its celebrity would, perhaps, rival the renown of the towers of the Eddystone and the Bell Rock, if, like them, it numbered as many years, and had been erected at an epoch when engineering science was less advanced than is the case in the present day.
As a matter of justice, however, we may remark that, notwithstanding the self-reliance of its celebrated constructor, when he cast the foundations of his edifice on the formidable rocks of the Epées de Tréguier—notwithstanding his thorough acquaintance with the labours of his predecessors—M. Léonce Reynaud found himself called upon to meet and conquer difficulties scarcely less numerous or less arduous than those so successfully vanquished by a Smeaton and a Stevenson.
These obstacles were of such a formidable character that the French Lighthouse Commission long hesitated, when deciding on the erection of a lighthouse at the mouth of the gulf which extends between Brittany and the Cotentin, whether its site should be on the mainland or out at sea. The rock on which the choice of the engineers finally rested was part of a group which the sea nearly overwhelms at high tide. It was evident, therefore, that the artificers would only be able to work for a certain number of hours daily. More, the ocean-currents of the region in which it was situated were proverbially very violent; their rate of speed was not less than eight knots per second, and when their force is augmented by the agitation of a tempest, the billows rage with excessive and formidable fury, swelling to enormous heights, and filling the air with their clash and clangour.