The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [32]
Robert produced his letters of introduction and authority and was told by the local Justice of the Peace that these were ‘merely bits of paper’. For a while, it seemed as if he would be kept in custody indefinitely until two further Justices cleared him of any suspicion of espionage and left him to go on his way, ‘which I did with so much eagerness that I gave the two coal lights upon the Lizard Point only a very transient look’.
The most famous of all English lighthouses, and the one which most interested Robert, was the Eddystone light. He was unable to see it in 1801 but returned twelve years later, intent on examining the light that had provided him with inspiration for many years. The journey was part research, part pilgrimage; the Eddystone was built by flawed heroes and, though Robert did not know it then, was to go through four different designs before it was finally completed. It was the first light to be built offshore in Britain and provided each subsequent generation of engineers with a useful precis of lighthouse design. The history of its multiple constructions also gave Robert vital guidance for his future career.
The Eddystone reef lies fourteen miles south-west of Plymouth. Most of it is submerged, with only three feet protruding from the sea at high tide. The rust-coloured gneiss is as resilient as diamonds and the currents that surround it send up abrupt spouts of water on even the calmest days. It is thought of as a bad-tempered place, full of sulks and strange moods, and by the sixteenth century its reputation for destruction had already spread well beyond Cornwall. Plymouth had every other advantage, including a wide, sheltered bay, a naval dockyard and a vigorous trade with the New World. But merchant captains were so alarmed by the prospect of being wrecked on the Eddystone that they often ran themselves aground on the Channel Islands or the northern French coast trying to avoid it. In 1664, Trinity House was petitioned by two local men for permission to build a lighthouse on the reef. The Elder Brethren rejected the petition, citing the risks involved and complaining, with impressive illogicality, that, since there was no precedent for an offshore light, it must therefore be impossible to build one. Thirty years later, with local pressure mounting, another petition was presented. Trinity House dithered for two further years and then decided that, instead of undertaking the project themselves, they would hand it out to a Plymouth man, ‘at his own cost and entire financial risk’. If it worked, they would, after a discreet interval, take the dues; if it didn’t, they had lost nothing.
The owner passed the project over to Henry Winstanley, an English eccentric of the finest breed. He was a man of many enthusiasms, an investor, designer, engraver, painter, pamphleteer, illusionist and inspiration for Winstanley’s Waterworks in Hyde Park, a show of ‘the greatest curiosities in waterworks, the like never performed by any’, which ran for over thirty years. Up until 1696, his only connection with engineering or the sea had been as a shipowner. One of his five merchant vessels had already been wrecked on the Eddystone, and a second, the Constant, ran aground on the reef before the end of the year. When Winstanley heard of the grounding, he galloped angrily off to Plymouth, demanded an explanation, and was told of the problems in lighting the rock. Winstanley presented himself to the new owner, and told him that he personally would build a lighthouse on the Eddystone. The owner, unconcerned by Winstanley’s lack of experience and wayward reputation,