THE TRINITY HOUSE
Now, some time before the monastic dissolution, there had been founded in
Deptford Church a guild or fraternity of sailors who undertook to watch
over the interests of all concerned in shipping. This guild, dedicated to
the honour of the Trinity, had, by the time of which we are speaking, or
a little later—say the opening years of the reign of James I—come to be
known by the name we know it to-day, the Trinity House, and had developed
into a rich and powerful corporation possessed of important royal
charters, regulating the general management of navigation, and supporting
and administering a number of exceedingly useful charities.
But this great corporation was ambitious, jealous of the powers it
possessed, and greedy to usurp more; the superintendence of the buoys and
beacons which marked out channels by day had become vested in it, and
its governing body alleged that it was also possessed of the sole right
of establishing lighthouses.
The question had arisen in respect to one of the lighthouse schemes we
have just mentioned. It had been proposed, as pointed out, not from
charity, but as a commercial speculation. Persons had come forward and
said they were willing to establish a lighthouse at such and such a
place, and to maintain a light there throughout the night, in return
for certain tolls which they should levy on passing ships; and they had
applied to the sovereign for the necessary licence to gather the toll,
and had received the desired warrant. But, said the Trinity House,
if anybody is to have this privilege, we will; the right to erect
lighthouses and gather money for their support is surely vested in us by
our various charters and Acts of Parliament!
So began a very pretty squabble, that did not die out till hard on the
end of the last century, between the Crown, the Trinity House, and the
private lighthouse speculator or builder. The wealthy shipowners, many
of whom were probably also colliery owners, became alarmed at the number
of lighthouse projects that were quickly launched. It was all very well
to give a voluntary contribution to support one or two lighthouses at
specially dangerous points, but on the whole it paid better to lose a
ship or two now and then, and a few men’s lives, than be put to a regular
fixed charge for the safety of navigation. That was their view, and as
the Trinity House Board was largely composed of men whose interests
were identical, that was their view also. Lighthouses were considered a
luxury, and if bestowed at all the Board must be the bestowers, and the
bestowals be made as seldom as possible.
Debates in Parliament and discussions in the Privy Council followed,
and the opinion of the law officers of the crown was taken. The general
impression seemed to be that the Trinity House was really charged with
the erection and maintenance of coast lights, but that it could not
impose rates for so doing. If it wanted to do that, it must get a special
patent or licence from the crown, and this the crown might give either to
the Trinity House or to any private individual.
And so the squabble went on till towards the end of the eighteenth
century, and every lighthouse scheme emanating from a private person was
opposed with ruthless vigour by the Trinity House. The watchful care of
the present corporation for the interests of navigation, the perfect
system of its machinery, and the public spirit of all concerned in its
management, stand out in pleasant contrast to the policy and action of
the Trinity House of the past, when schemes for lighting the Lizard, St.
Catherine’s, the Forelands, the Goodwins, Dungeness, the Spurn, the Farne
Islands, and a host of others, were condemned as ‘needless,’ ‘useless,’
or ‘dangerous,’ and ‘a burthen and hindrance’ to navigation.
But despite opposition and hostility, lighthouses, for which rates were
gathered, were built in considerable numbers, so that by the first
half of the seventeenth century these welcome signals to the mariner
broke forth into the gloom of night from many a dangerous headland of
the English coast. Of course they were not erected in positions that
called for the display of great engineering skill; reefs and shoals
that lay far out at sea had to go unmarked till much more recent times.
The ever-shifting Goodwins drew forth suggestions for indicating their
dangers as early as the days of Queen Bess, but the suggestions emanated
from those whose enterprise was greater than their capacity, and came to
nought. The Eddystone lighthouse, fourteen miles from shore, was really
the _first_ great engineering triumph connected with coast lighting, and
Winstanley, with all his pedantry, deserves a niche in the Temple of Fame
for having erected a lighthouse there at all!
Floating lights, or lightships, were, I think, projected as early as
1623, though the project was not then actually carried into effect[1];
and they were proposed again, as ‘a novelty,’ half a century later
at the Nore. But the Trinity House laughed at the suggestion, and the
Nore remained without a light till 1730, or thereabouts, when the first
lightship actually established was anchored there.
But it is not fair to say thus much and no more about the Trinity House.
Its history was written not long since by Mr. Barrett, and the reader
who turns to this will see that if its ‘lighthouse policy’ was bad and
illiberal, the utility of the corporation was manifested in many other
ways; all through the reign of Charles I it was busy rendering efficient
service to the Navy. The corporation dissuaded the king from building,
merely for show, what was then a ‘big ship’—124 feet long, and 46 feet
in breadth, and drawing 24 feet of water; no existing port could take
such a ship, and no anchor or cable would hold her. The brethren might
have preached from the lesson taught by the Armada; ours were the small
craft that won in combat with the floating castles of Spain. ‘The wit and
ingenuity of man,’ say the brethren, could not produce a seaworthy craft
with three tiers of ordnance. If your majesty desires to serve the Navy,
build two ships—the same money will do it!’ It is very curious to mark
how Government got for nothing a great deal of valuable advice, and it is
not very clear when the practical control of the dockyard at Deptford
ceased to be in the Trinity House.
All this time the corporation charities were not forgotten. Besides
enlarging the almshouses at Deptford, they were building others at
Stepney, and organizing means for the relief of aged seamen, which was
practically a scheme for insurance against old age and sickness.
Let us also, before we leave the subject of the Trinity House, say
something further as to its history up to the time of the control of
all lighthouses around the English coast being vested in it by Act of
Parliament. In the angry days of the struggle between the King and
Parliament, the board was loyal to the former, and paid its debt to the
latter by being superseded in its authority by a committee. But with
the restoration of Charles II came also a restoration of the ancient
privileges of the Trinity House, which were watched over by General Monk
as master. Other famous men presided over the corporation somewhat later;
amongst them Samuel Pepys, in whose _Diary_ are many allusions to his
work there.
In the Restoration year the corporation moved from its former home to
the more central one in which we now know it, near the Tower of London.
Trinity Monday was that year kept in good style by a dinner for forty.
But the corporation did not long enjoy the comforts of its new home; the
flames of the fire of London licked round it, burnt the woodwork, and
gutted it, destroying valuable pictures and also papers and parchments
which would have drawn aside the veil that now shrouds the early
history of the fraternity. It was not till August, 1670, that the house
was built again; the rebuilding was no light matter, and in 1672 the
corporation was £1,100 in debt, and some years elapsed ere that was wiped
out. Meanwhile, every brother, elder or younger, seems to have behaved
with a public spirit, foregoing any participation in the funds of the
institution, leaving that for the poor and needy.
A little after this, whilst Pepys was master of the Trinity House, the
suggestion was put forward of a compulsory purchase by the board of all
existing lighthouses. We will not speculate as to the object the brethren
had in desiring this acquisition; it is sufficient to state that its
policy towards lighthouse schemes in general was not one which could
have given the public much confidence; the time had not yet come for the
scheme proposed.
But a little more than a century later the lighthouse policy of the
Trinity House had entirely changed. The board no longer thwarted
proposals for lighthouses and lightships in places needful; it was itself
proposing them and helping, with its powerful hand, the sailor to fight
for his rights in demanding that, for the dues he paid, the private owner
should show a good and a steady light, and was furthering every project
put forth by men of science for improving the power and intensity of
lighthouse luminants.
The result was inevitable. Sailors, merchants, the people at large,
began to look upon the corporation as every one looks upon it to-day—as
a public-spirited institution, labouring its hardest in the interests of
navigation. So it came about that in the year 1836 privately maintained
lights were altogether extinguished, and the entire control of our
lighthouse system handed over to the corporation that now directs it.
[Illustration: ANCIENT COAST-LIGHT.]