LIGHTHOUSES
THEIR HISTORY AND ROMANCE
Oxford
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
[Illustration: THE FIRST LIGHTHOUSE AT DUNGENESS.
(_From a receipt for Lighthouse dues, dated December 19, 1690, in the
possession of Lord Kenyon._)]
LIGHTHOUSES
THEIR HISTORY AND ROMANCE
BY
W. J. HARDY, F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘THE HANDWRITING OF THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND;’
‘BOOK PLATES,’ ETC.
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
56 PATERNOSTER ROW, AND 65 ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD
1895
[Illustration: THE EDDYSTONE MEDAL, 1757.]
PREFACE
I have for some years past devoted a good deal of time to the study of
facts connected with the history of English coast-lighting, and I have
now woven together into this volume such of the scattered references to
the subject which I have found, and have entitled it, _Lighthouses: their
History and Romance_. That there is much romantic incident in connection
with our lighthouses, and that many of them possess interesting
histories, the reader of the following pages will, I think, admit; and
it is really surprising that no history of them has before this been
compiled.
I could not have obtained the facts I have here been able to bring
together had I not received constant and generous assistance from all
those in whose power it was to render it; and were I to attempt to convey
to the officials of the British Museum and Public Record Office, who have
assisted me, individual thanks, I should unduly prolong this preface. Yet
I cannot leave unrecorded my gratitude to Mr. W. Y. Fletcher, F.S.A.,
late of the Printed Books Department, in the first-named office, and to
Mr. G. H. Overend, F.S.A., in the latter.
Not one half of the facts here recorded could have been obtained had I
not received free and full access to the muniments of the Corporation of
the Trinity House. This was accorded to me through the instrumentality of
Sir Edward Birkbeck, Bart., and my good friend, his brother, Mr. Robert
Birkbeck, F.S.A. I presented their introduction to Sir Sydney Webb,
K.C.M.G., the Deputy-Master of the Trinity House, and that gentleman,
Mr. Kent, the Secretary, and Mr. Weller, one of the officials of the
department, gave me every assistance in their power and the freest access
to their records. To Mr. Dibdin and his assistants at the National
Lifeboat Institution I also desire to express my gratitude for various
information supplied, and in particular for some of the wreck incidents I
have mentioned.
I am particularly grateful to Lord Kenyon for allowing the reproduction
of two very interesting contemporary pictures of seventeenth-century
lighthouses—those at Dungeness and the Scillies; and to Mr. Mill
Stephenson, F.S.A., the Secretary of the Royal Archaeological Institute,
for the use of one of the illustrations—the Silver Model of Winstanley’s
Eddystone Lighthouse—that appeared, some years ago, in the Journal of the
Society.
My thanks are due, and I return them with pleasure, to my fellow-worker,
Mr. William Page, F.S.A., who has always brought to my knowledge any fact
connected with Lighthouse history that he came upon in his researches.
In presenting to the public the last volume which I published through
the Religious Tract Society, _The Handwriting of the Kings and Queens
of England_, I was permitted to thank the Rev. Richard Lovett, M.A., the
Society’s Book Editor, for his constant help and advice in bringing out
that work. I trust that I may be again accorded the privilege of thanking
him for his unfailing courtesy and good nature in discussing and settling
points of detail in connection with this present work.
W. J. HARDY.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL LIGHTHOUSES 17
CHAPTER II.
THE TRINITY HOUSE 29
CHAPTER III.
ANCIENT METHODS OF LIGHTING 39
CHAPTER IV.
GRACE DARLING 45
CHAPTER V.
THE SPURN HEAD 53
CHAPTER VI.
THE HUMBER TO THE THAMES 62
CHAPTER VII.
THE NORE LIGHTSHIP 71
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GOODWIN SANDS AND THE FORELANDS 79
CHAPTER IX.
DUNGENESS LIGHTHOUSE 95
CHAPTER X.
ST. CATHERINE’S POINT TO THE EDDYSTONE 101
CHAPTER XI.
SUGGESTIONS FOR A LIGHTHOUSE ON THE EDDYSTONE—HENRY WINSTANLEY 108
CHAPTER XII.
THE FIRST EDDYSTONE 120
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SECOND EDDYSTONE 140
CHAPTER XIV.
THE THIRD AND FOURTH LIGHTHOUSES AT THE EDDYSTONE 148
CHAPTER XV.
THE LIZARD 163
CHAPTER XVI.
THE WOLF, THE LAND’S END, AND THE LONGSHIPS 176
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SCILLIES 190
CHAPTER XVIII.
LIGHTHOUSES ON THE WESTERN COAST 204
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE FIRST LIGHTHOUSE AT DUNGENESS _Frontispiece_
THE EDDYSTONE MEDAL, 1757 7
THE BELL ROCK LIGHTHOUSE 16
THE PHAROS, ALEXANDRIA 19
ANCIENT COAST-LIGHT 38
OUTER FARNE LIGHTHOUSE 45
GRACE DARLING AND HER FATHER ON THE WAY TO THE WRECK 49
GRACE DARLING 51
MODEL OF THE FIRST LIGHTSHIP 70
MODEL OF A LIGHTSHIP BUILT IN 1790 73
PACK OF PLAYING CARDS DESIGNED BY WINSTANLEY 116
WINSTANLEY’S EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE 129
SILVER MODEL OF EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE AFTER ALTERATION 134
RUDYERD’S EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE 141
THE EDDYSTONE BUILT BY SMEATON 149
SMEATON’S MODE OF DOVETAILING THE STONES 151
SMEATON’S CHANDELIER 154
SECTION OF THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE BUILT BY SMEATON 156
THE PRESENT EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE 159
WOLF ROCK LIGHTHOUSE 178
LONGSHIPS LIGHTHOUSE 182
THE WRECKER 186
ST. AGNES LIGHTHOUSE, SCILLY ISLES 193
THE BISHOP’S ROCK LIGHTHOUSE 202
THE SMALLS LIGHTHOUSE 207
LIGHTHOUSE AT HOLYHEAD 218
[Illustration: THE BELL ROCK LIGHTHOUSE.]
CHAPTER I
ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL LIGHTHOUSES
‘The good old Abbot of Aberbrothock
Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock;
On a buoy, in the storm, it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung.
When the rock was hid by the surge’s swell
The mariners heard the warning bell,
And then they knew the perilous rock,
And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothock!’
It was very good of the old abbot so to do; but in doing what he did, he
was no better than a great many of his fellows. Marking dangerous reefs,
and leading the mariner safely into port, were, formerly, the work of
Christian charity; they were two of the many useful offices which the
Church performed when there was no one else to carry them out, and for
which we, who see the same things so much better done, often forget to
bestow upon her even a word of praise or gratitude. Bells on rocks,
marks on shoals and sands, and beacon lights used to be maintained by the
great monasteries, or by their various offshoots, in this country; and
those beacon lights, dim, flickering, and uncertain though they may have
been, were the direct ancestors of the modern lighthouse.
We do not, of course, claim for Christian charity the credit of
_originating_ the idea of these warning signals for ships. Long before
the dawn of Christianity, Lybians, Cushites, Romans, Greeks, and
Phoenicians had protected navigation by the means of lighthouses—high
columns, on the summits of which were placed fires of wood in open
grates, or lamps lit by oil, all similar in style, though on a smaller
scale, to the wonderful tower of white marble, erected at Alexandria,
nearly three centuries before the birth of Christ, by Ptolemy
Philadelphus at a cost of about £170,000 of our money.
[Illustration: THE PHAROS, ALEXANDRIA.]
Opinions differ as to whom should be ascribed the honour of paying for
this mighty work; Alexander the Great and Cleopatra have been credited
with it; but, on the whole, such reliable evidence as there is points
more to Ptolemy as its projector. This being so, we may perhaps believe
the story about the inscription that was placed upon the tower. The
architect’s name was Sostratos, and he, desiring to be perpetually
remembered in connection with the lighthouse, cut deeply into one of the
stones these words: ‘Sostratos of Guidos, son of Dixiphanus, to the Gods
protecting those upon the sea.’ Then—being assured that Ptolemy would
permit no name save his own to be remembered in connection with the
work—he coated over the inscription with a layer of cement, and placed
thereon one wholly laudatory of Ptolemy and associating his name alone
with the erection of the pillar. Time went by; monarch and architect had
been gathered to their fathers, and at last the cement began to crack,
and then drop away; bit by bit it vanished together with the writing upon
it, and the letters on the true face of the stone beneath stood out clear
and readable—then the world knew to whose skill was due this blessing to
sailors and travellers!
But it is not needful to speak further of these more ancient lighthouses,
or their builders; reference is made to them only to remind the reader
of the antiquity of coast lighting as a system. These pages concern
the lighthouses of our own country alone, and there is no evidence to
prove or suggest that the shores of England were lighted prior to the
Roman occupation. Indeed, of direct evidence of lighthouses being used
by the Romans in Britain, there is exceedingly little. The system was
extensively employed by them in Gaul, and the Tour d’Ordre at Boulogne—or
‘the Old Man of Bullen,’ as Elizabethan sailors called it—is mentioned
as a lighthouse in the year 191 A.D.; so that it is hardly likely
that the Romans would, for long, have left navigation around England
unassisted by lights.
We may, therefore, accept the ruined tower at Dover, and some similar
remains on the English and Welsh coasts, as remains of Roman lighthouses.
Whether or not, with the decay of the Roman power in England, lighthouses
fell to ruin, we do not know; probably this was so, and probably,
too, they were not resuscitated till Christianity had become firmly
established here and was teaching men charity towards their fellow men.
So early as the opening of the fourteenth century we find monks and
hermits in England, and other maritime parts of Europe, doing their best
to warn mariners of the dangers that lurked around their monasteries or
hermitages, by means of lights maintained during the season of darkness.
To the north of the island of Jersey lie a cluster of sharp-pointed
rocks, known as the Ecrehou. Sailors give them a wide berth when they
can; as well they may, for their cruel spike-like reefs stretch far, and
on calm days, when the water is not breaking upon them, they lie silently
and treacherously in wait for the passing ship.
On the largest of these rocks there was, in the year 1309, a hermitage,
or priory, served from the Norman abbey of Val Richer. Land in Jersey
had, years before, been given to support two monks here who, by day, used
to sing masses for the souls of those who had perished by shipwreck, and
then, as night closed in, kindle, and keep burning till daybreak, as good
and bright a light as they could upon their tiny building.
Here is a picture romantic enough, and research would, no doubt, enable
us to paint many such. The ruined chapels that one so often sees to-day,
perched upon a rocky crag or headland of our coast, were often, in all
probability, lighthouses to the mariner of old.
But it is not necessary to leave too much to imagination. A great deal
more can be said to prove that the maintenance of sea-lights was, in
mediaeval England, really a religious office. Most of us have heard of
(many have seen) the famous lighthouse on St. Catherine’s Point in the
Isle of Wight. It was built only at the close of the last century, but
hard by it, from the hermitage chapel on Chale Down, a light had been
nightly kept, by the monks there serving God, for more than five hundred
years. I shall tell the history of this lighthouse later on.
So, too, in 1427, a hermit who had settled at Ravenspurn—close by the
Spurn Point on the Humber—moved by the constant disasters to shipping
that he witnessed, set to work to build a lighthouse to warn vessels
entering the river of the dangers of the point; and of this lighthouse
also I shall have more to say presently.
Then on the chapel of St. Nicholas, which stood above the harbour of
Ilfracombe, there was maintained by the priests who served in the chapel
a fire of wood, which was lighted, throughout the winter, at dusk, and by
being constantly tended gave throughout the night a light that to ships
at a distance seemed like a bright star, and guided them safely into
port. The site of this chapel is yet called Lantern Hill, and a light is
still shown there from a lighthouse at night during the winter months.
In one instance, at least, the work of coast lighting was performed
by a religious guild: the Brethren of the Blessed Trinity of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne—the Trinity House of Newcastle, as it is now called.
In 1537 Henry VIII committed to this guild the general care of all
matters connected with the navigation of the Tyne, and amongst other
things which the guild had expressed its willingness to do, was to build
two towers on the north side of ‘Le Shelys,’ one a certain distance above
the other, to embattle these towers for due defence of the port, and to
maintain on each ‘a good and steady light by night,’ for the guidance of
passing ships. In 1746 these two lighthouses, one of which was movable,
were still standing; they were illuminated only by a few candles, but
were the sole lighthouses of which the River Tyne, at its entrance, could
boast.
Then, to emphasize further the fact that, prior to the religious changes
in the reign of Henry VIII, coast lighting was carried on as a work
of Christian charity, we may call to mind the traditions, so often
associated with the towers or steeples of parish churches on the coast,
that those towers or steeples had once been lighthouses. Blakeney, in
Norfolk, is one of these, Boston is another; from the summit of ‘Boston
Stump’—as the marvellously high tower of the latter church is called—we
are told that a light was formerly displayed by which sailors in the
German Ocean could shape their course to enter ‘Boston Deeps’ in safety.
The dissolution of the monasteries swept away, almost at a blow, the
men who tended these coast lights as a sacred duty, and it confiscated
the property from the profits of which such lights had been maintained.
Leland, when he travelled through England and Wales, after the
dissolution had been some little time in progress, found few coast lights
remaining: here and there he mentions them, but it is difficult, from his
language, to decide whether those he refers to were still nightly lit, or
whether he gained from the sailors and fisher-folk with whom he talked
that they had been regularly lit shortly before.
That our coast, only a little previous to the dissolution, was well
lit, and that lighthouses of some kind or other were not uncommon, we
may gather from the writer of the _Pilgrimage of Perfection_, who, in
the year 1526—when speaking of the benefit to the soul by frequent
contemplation of death—says: ‘It depresseth all vanities, dissolution,
and lightness of manners, and, _like as the beacon lighted in the
night, directeth the mariner to the port intended_, so the meditation
of death maketh man to eschew the rocks and perils of damnation’: and
that, after the dissolution, all, or the great majority, of these lights
were extinguished, we may certainly infer by a study of _The Mariner’s
Mirrour_, compiled by Wagener, a Dutch navigator, in 1586, and translated
into English two years later by Anthony Ashley. Wagener describes
minutely every object on the sea-coast of England, but does not refer to
any nocturnal lights, with the exception of those at Shields, which we
have seen were established under peculiar circumstances and only just
prior to the dissolution.
But the want of lighthouses must have been keenly felt by sailors; and
those engaged in navigation, no longer able to get what was needed as
charity, seem, after a while, to have suggested paying for it. One of the
earliest post-reformation lighthouses suggested was that at Winterton,
for which we hear proposals in 1585, just about the time that Wagener
wrote his description of the English coast. Now what was the site which
naturally suggested itself for establishing this light? Why, _the top of
the church steeple_; where, likely enough, a similar light had formerly
been maintained as an act of charity.
The proposal emanated from ‘the masters of her Majesties Navye,’ and was
made on behalf of the seamen of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk;
‘there be,’ it says, ‘many perillous sandes in the sea, thwarte of
Hasborrowe Winterton, and the towne of Great Yermouthe, wheruppon manye
shippes and men are often perished in the night tyme.’
The danger of these sands might well be avoided ‘iffe a contynuall lighte
were maynteyned uppon the steeple of Winterton,’ which might be easily
done, without any ‘greate imposition or taxation,’ if every English
ship trading by the coast, or to the East countries, paid some small
contribution.
Nothing seems to have come of this proposal, and the next suggestion we
hear of for a lighthouse at Winterton is one some twenty years later in
1607, made by the Trinity House to maintain a light, not on a church
steeple, but in a building specially erected for the purpose.
Nor was this a solitary lighthouse scheme. We hear, just then, of
another—a very mad one, it is true, but none the less interesting on that
account—for a lighthouse on the Goodwins, of which I shall speak later.
Probably there were many more such proposals before Queen Elizabeth and
her council just then, for it is impossible to conceive that men, many of
whom must have had personal experience of the benefits of coast lighting,
would be content to sit down and do without them just because the
religious changes had swept away the machinery that had before supported
them.