1. The need for a light

2. Winstanley's lighthouse

3. Rudyard's lighthouse

4. Smeaton's lighthouse

5. Douglass's lighthouse
    Present day 

6. References in media

7. Gallery

8. See also

9. Notes

10. References

11. Further reading

12. External links

(The stub of the third lighthouse is visible in the background.)

The Eddystone Lighthouse is on the dangerous Eddystone Rocks, {{convert|9|smi|km}} south of Rame Head, England, United Kingdom. While Rame Head is in Cornwall, the rocks are in Devon^[3] and composed of Precambrian gneiss.^[4]

The current structure is the fourth to be built on the site. The first and second were destroyed by storm and fire. The third, also known as Smeaton's Tower, is the best known because of its influence on lighthouse design and its importance in the development of concrete for building. Its upper portions have been re-erected in Plymouth as a monument.^[5] The first lighthouse, completed in 1699, was the world's first open ocean lighthouse although the Cordouan lighthouse preceded it as the first offshore lighthouse.^[6]

The need for a light

The Eddystone Rocks are an extensive reef approximately 12 miles (19 km) SSW of Plymouth Sound, one of the most important naval harbours of England, and midway between Lizard Point, Cornwall and Start Point. They are submerged at high spring tides and were so feared by mariners entering the English Channel that they often hugged the coast of France to avoid the danger, which thus resulted not only in shipwrecks locally, but on the rocks of the north coast of France and the Channel Islands.^[7] Given the difficulty of gaining a foothold on the rocks particularly in the predominant swell it was a long time before anyone attempted to place any warning on them.

Winstanley's lighthouse

The first lighthouse on Eddystone Rocks was an octagonal wooden structure built by Henry Winstanley. The lighthouse was also the first recorded instance of an offshore lighthouse.^[6] Construction started in 1696 and the light was lit on 14 November 1698. During construction, a French privateer took Winstanley prisoner and destroyed the work done so far on the foundations, causing Louis XIV to order Winstanley's release with the words "France is at war with England, not with humanity".^[5][8]

The lighthouse survived its first winter but was in need of repair, and was subsequently changed to a dodecagonal (12 sided) stone clad exterior on a timber framed construction with an octagonal top section as can be seen in the later drawings or paintings. This gives rise to the claims that there have been five lighthouses on Eddystone Rock. Winstanley's tower lasted until the Great Storm of 1703 erased almost all trace on 27 November. Winstanley was on the lighthouse, completing additions to the structure. No trace was found of him, or of the other five men in the lighthouse.^[9][10]

The cost of construction and five years' maintenance totalled £7,814 7s.6d, during which time dues totalling £4,721 19s.3d had been collected at one penny per ton from passing vessels.

Rudyard's lighthouse

Following the destruction of the first lighthouse, Captain John Lovett^[11][12] acquired the lease of the rock, and by Act of Parliament was allowed to charge passing ships a toll of one penny per ton. He commissioned John Rudyard (or Rudyerd) to design the new lighthouse, built as a conical wooden structure around a core of brick and concrete. A temporary light was first shone from it in 1708^[13] and the work was completed in 1709. This proved more durable, surviving nearly fifty years.^[5]

On the night of 2 December 1755, the top of the lantern caught fire, probably through a spark from one of the candles used to illuminate the light. The three keepers threw water upwards from a bucket but were driven onto the rock and were rescued by boat as the tower burnt down. Keeper Henry Hall, who was 94 at the time, died several days later from ingesting molten lead from the lantern roof.^[5] A report on this case was submitted to the Royal Society by physician Edward Spry,^[14] and the piece of lead is now in the collections of the National Museums of Scotland.^[15][16]

Smeaton's lighthouse

Recommended by the Royal Society, civil engineer John Smeaton modelled the shape on an oak tree, built of granite blocks. He pioneered 'hydraulic lime', a concrete that cured under water, and developed a technique of securing the granite blocks using dovetail joints and marble dowels. Construction started in 1756 at Millbay^[17] and the light was first lit on 16 October 1759.^[5]

Smeaton's lighthouse was 59 feet (18 m) high and had a diameter at the base of 26 feet (8 m) and at the top of 17 feet (5 m).

In 1841 major renovations were made,^[18] under the direction of engineer Henry Norris of Messrs. Walker & Burges, including complete repointing, replacement water tanks and filling of a large cavity in the rock close to the foundations. It remained in use until 1877 when erosion to the rocks under the lighthouse caused it to shake from side to side whenever large waves hit.^[19] Smeaton's lighthouse was rebuilt on Plymouth Hoe, in Plymouth, as a memorial. William Tregarthen Douglass supervised the dismantling and removal of Smeaton's Tower. The re-erected tower on the Hoe is now a tourist attraction.

The foundations and stub of the tower remain, close to the new and more solid foundations of the current lighthouse^[5] – the foundations proved too strong to be dismantled so the Victorians left them where they stood.

An 1850 replica of Smeaton's lighthouse, Hoad Monument, stands above the town of Ulverston, Cumbria as a memorial to naval administrator Sir John Barrow.

Douglass's lighthouse

The current, fourth, lighthouse was designed by James Douglass, using Robert Stevenson's developments of Smeaton's techniques. By April 1879 the new site, on the South Rock was being prepared during the 3½ hours between ebb and flood tide. The supply ship Hercules was based at Oreston, now a suburb of Plymouth, and the stone was prepared at the Oreston yard and supplied from the works of Messrs Shearer, Smith and Co of Wadebridge.^[20][21] The light was lit in 1882 and is still in use.

The lighthouse was equipped with a large (first-order) six-sided biform (i.e. two-tier) rotating optic, {{convert|12.5|ft|m|adj=on}} high in total, manufactured by Chance Brothers of Smethwick; each of the six sides of the optic was divided into two Fresnel lens panels, which provided the light's characteristic of two flashes every thirty seconds.^[22] Illumination was provided by a pair of Douglass-designed six-wick concentric oil burners; eighteen cisterns in the lower part of the tower were used to store up to 2,660 tons (nine months' worth) of colza oil to fuel the lamps.^[23] In addition to the main light a fixed white light was shone from a room on the eighth storey of the tower (using Argand lamps and reflectors) in the direction of the hazardous Hand Deeps.

The lighthouse was also provided with a pair of large bells, each weighing two tons, which were suspended from either side of the lantern gallery to serve as a fog signal. Ten years later they were supplemented (and then supplanted) by use of an explosive fog signal device.^[30]

In the early 20th century the oil lamps were replaced with petroleum vapour burners.^[22] Then, in 1959 the light was electrified and the current smaller (fourth-order) 'bi-valve' optic was installed. At the same time a 'supertyfon' fog signal was installed, with compressors powered from the diesel generators.^[24] The lighthouse was automated in 1982, the first Trinity House 'Rock' (or offshore) lighthouse to be converted. Two years earlier the tower had been changed by construction of a helipad above the lantern, to allow maintenance crews access;^[25] the helipad has a weight limit of 3600kg. As part of the automation of the lighthouse a new electric fog signal was installed and a metal halide discharge lamp replaced the incandescent light bulb formerly in use. The light and other systems were monitored remotely, initially by Trinity House staff at the nearby Penlee Point fog signal station.^[26] Since 1999 the lighthouse has run on solar power.^[27]

Present day

The tower is {{convert|49|m|ft}} high, and its white light flashes twice every 10 seconds. The light is visible to {{convert|22|nmi|km}}, and is supplemented by a foghorn of 3 blasts every 62 seconds.^[5] A subsidiary red sector light shines from a window in the tower to highlight the Hand Deeps hazard to the west-northwest. The lighthouse is now monitored and controlled from the Trinity House Operations Control Centre at Harwich in Essex.

References in media

• The lighthouse inspired a sea shanty, frequently recorded, that begins "My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light / And he slept with a mermaid one fine night / From this union there came three / A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!".^[28] Another version has the fourth line as "Two of them were fishes and the other was me." There are several verses.
• The lighthouse has been used as a metaphor for stability.^[29]
• In the Goon Show episode Ten Snowballs that shook the World (1958), Neddie Seagoon is sent to Eddystone Lighthouse to warn the inhabitants that Sterling has dropped from F-sharp to E-flat.
• The lighthouse is celebrated in the opening and closing movements of Ron Goodwin's Drake 400 Suite. The movement's main theme was directly inspired by the lighthouse's unique light characteristic.^[30]
• A novel based on the building of Smeaton's lighthouse, containing many details of the construction, was published in 2005.^[31]
• The lighthouse is referenced twice in Herman Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick; at the beginning of Chapter 14, "Nantucket": "How it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse.", and in Chapter 133, "The Chase – First Day": "So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud."
• The lighthouse is referred to in "Daddy was a Ballplayer" by the Canadian band Stringband, and follows a similar line to the sea shanty.
• "The Most Famous of All Lighthouses," the third chapter of The Story of Lighthouses (Norton 1965) by Mary Ellen Chase, is devoted to the Eddystone Lighthouse.
• Eddystone Lighthouse was used for many of the exterior shots in The Phantom Light, a 1935 film directed by Michael Powell.^[32]

Gallery

See also

• List of lighthouses in England
• Eddystone, the Google Bluetooth Low Energy beacon

Notes

References

• Christmukkah
• Christ. (musician)
• Christ myth theory
• Christo
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude
• Christo Bonev
• Christocentric
• Christocephalous
• Christodorus
• Christodoulos of Athens
• Christodoulos Paraskevaides
• Christodoulus
• Christof Drouillet
• Christofer Fjellner
• Christoferine
• Christofer lawrence
• Christoff, Boris
• Christoffel
• Christoffelberg
• Christoffel Plantijn
• Christoffel symbol
• Christoffel symbols
• Christoffer Gabel
• Christoffer I
• Christoffer II