ST. CATHERINE’S POINT TO THE EDDYSTONE
There is not much to say about the lighthouses along our southern coast
between Dungeness and St. Catherine’s, in the Isle of Wight; but the
lighthouse at this latter place has an interesting history.
What now remains of the ancient building tower, octagonal without but
square within, which consists of four distinct stories; the two lower
were entered from an annexe building, whilst the two upper were mere
stages reached by ladders. The beam-holes may still be seen, and they
show that this was the arrangement. Two entrances to the tower remain—low
and narrow doorways, one exactly over the other; the upper being the
narrower of the two. The basement is lit by a couple of square-headed
windows, not very wide, with arched lintels in the inner face.
Such is the ancient lighthouse of St. Catherine’s as we see it to-day;
certainly a picturesque ruin, and certainly possessed of interesting
and romantic associations. The spot was already a hermit’s cell in the
year 1312, when the Bishop of Winchester admitted Walter de Langeberewe
to ‘the hermitage on the hill of Chale, dedicated to St. Catherine the
Virgin.’ Whether or not it was then part of the hermit’s duty to light
and trim a lamp in his hermitage to warn vessels of the presence of St.
Catherine’s Point, hard by, we do not learn; but we know, now, that this
was no unusual task for the occupant of a hermitage.
Two years after Walter’s admission, that is, in the winter of 1314, a
ship—one of a fleet chartered by some merchants of Aquitaine to bring
over a consignment of wine into England from the vineyard of a monastery
in Picardy—went ashore near the hermitage, and soon the force of the
waves dashed her to pieces, scattering her cargo, which was, most of
it, washed ashore. Her crew escaped safely to land, and then gathered
together as many of the casks as they could, which—thinking that the
owners would imagine all had been lost with the ship—they proceeded to
dispose of, for the best terms they were able to make, to the inhabitants
round about.
But in process of time the true story of the wreck travelled over the
Channel and reached the ears of the merchants of Aquitaine, who forthwith
brought an action in the English courts against the sailors and those
who had bought the shipwrecked cargo. In the end damages were awarded to
the merchants, and the incautious purchasers supposed that the matter had
been brought to a conclusion. But it was not so; the Church—the monks
in Picardy—had been wronged, for the wine really belonged to them; the
merchants had only the consignment of it; and so the pope interfered
and held that the purchasers must atone for their illicit trading. He
decided what form the atonement should take: Walter de Godeton, one of
the largest buyers, was to establish in the hermitage of St. Catherine a
priest who would offer continual prayer for those perished at sea, and
he was also to build a tower adjoining the hermitage, from which a light
should nightly be displayed to warn passing ships of the danger of St.
Catherine’s Point. The ruin which we see to-day is evidence that this
part of the papal direction was duly carried out. What was the subsequent
history of this lighthouse, we do not know; but at the general sweeping
away of hermitages and oratories this useful light seems no longer to
have been maintained.
In the seventeenth century, and again in the eighteenth, schemes were
set on foot for re-erecting a lighthouse near the ruined tower of St.
Catherine’s, though none was actually established at the spot till just
at the end of the last century. That is the date at which the lighthouse
now standing there was erected—a lighthouse famous throughout the
maritime world for the extraordinary brilliancy of its light, given by
electricity.
Weymouth and Melcombe Regis were important ports during the Middle Ages,
and it is possible, nay probable, that some system of guiding incoming
vessels by night existed there in early times; but if it did, all trace
of it is lost. Portland Hill seems a natural place for a lighthouse,
yet the first we hear of one there is quite at the beginning of the
last century, when Captain William Holman’s petition to erect one was
submitted to the Trinity House.
The board considered that at the spot suggested the land was so high and
the water so deep, ‘to the very shore,’ that lights were needless; adding
that the duty proposed would add to the already heavy burdens borne by
the shipowners. The report concludes with the argument, used before in
other cases, that had lights been needed at Portland, the board would
have suggested them. Not perhaps convinced with this method of argument,
the corporation of Weymouth and the seamen of that port again urged
the actual necessity for a lighthouse. Their petition and those that
succeeded it were, however, ‘shelved.’
But the value of lighthouses was getting to be too widely appreciated
for a scheme like that at Portland to be crushed, because it was thought
that ‘navigation’ paid enough for light dues already. The seamen
clamoured and raised public opinion on their side, and so the Trinity
House thought the best thing to do was for itself to propose lighthouses
at Portland, which it did, and obtained a patent on May 6, 1716.
The superior economy of the ‘closed’ fire-light was then, as we have
seen in other instances, attracting attention, and the fire at the
higher lighthouse at Portland was arranged on that plan; but it did no
better there than elsewhere, and in 1731 we find the mariners ‘who used
the western trade’ urging the Trinity Board to ‘open’ the fires on the
lighthouses there, and allow the smoke to escape, instead of dimming and
clouding the glass.
But probably ill-keeping had as much as anything to do with the badness
of the lights, which was frequently a subject of complaint by nautical
men. In 1752 we get a curious picture of the condition in which the
lights were maintained: two brethren of the Trinity House, who had been
sent to consider the position of a proposed lighthouse at the Lizard,
thought well to inspect those at Portland, and approached them on a
summer’s evening by sea. ‘It was,’ they say, ‘nigh two hours after sunset
before any light appeared in either of the lighthouses.’ Then, in the
lower light, there came a faint glimmer, which continued for about an
hour, and ceased. Half an hour after, a light appeared in the upper
lighthouse, and gave a very fitful light, only showing at intervals for
the first hour, and then ‘gave a tolerable good light,’ though not so
steady as the lower.
The two brethren asked the captain of their boat if this state of
things was the rule or the exception, and received an answer that the
ill-keeping was the rule; the lights never showed in time, and often
not all through the night. It must be said to the credit of these two
brothers that they suggested that the captain and his friends, who ‘used
the coasting trade,’ should memorialize the Trinity House on the subject.
West of Portland, none of the other headlands from that, as far as
Plymouth, were marked by lighthouses till within a hundred years ago—that
is to say, as far as we know. What may have been the case before the
dissolution of the monasteries cannot now be definitely ascertained;
there are many ruined chapels along the coast between these two points,
and there is a legend connected with that which stands on the hill above
Torquay, to the effect that it was founded by a sailor who had been
rescued from shipwreck near the spot, and who—as a thankoffering for
safety—gave money to support a small band of monks from Torr Abbey to
keep a light there for the benefit of ships going up and down the Channel.
But when we reach Plymouth we are practically opposite the best known
lighthouse in England, the Eddystone. The history of this isolated
building does not perhaps go back very far; yet it is certainly as
interesting and full of incident as that of any of which we have yet
spoken.