The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [34]
Almost immediately, the owners of the Eddystone began looking for a successor to Rudyerd. This time, they chose an engineer. John Smeaton was a Yorkshireman born in 1724, and originally trained as an instrument maker. The amateur habits of engineering at the time suited him and after his involvement with the Eddystone he went on to become involved with an exceptional span of projects, including Norfolk fen drainage, the construction of several bridges and aqueducts and the Forth-Clyde Canal. ‘I consider myself,’ he wrote later, ‘in no other light than as a private artist who works for hire, for those who are pleased to employ me, and those whom I can conveniently and consistently serve.’ The Eddystone proved his most flamboyant epitaph, and provided the template for all future attempts at lighthouse engineering. Smeaton’s plans for the new lighthouse differed again from Rudyerd’s. It was essential, he considered, to build the whole structure from stone to ensure that it was heavy enough to resist the worst of storms. Instead of making the tower conical, he designed a tapering base to give it the greatest possible solidity on the rock and the maximum buttressing above. He used the analogy of a tree trunk: ‘the English oak tree withstands the most violent weather conditions; so I visualise a new tower shaped like an oak. Why? Because the oak tree resists similar elemental pressures to those which wrecked the [Winstanley] lighthouse; an oak tree is broad at its base, curves inwards at its waist, becomes narrower towards the top. We seldom hear of a mature oak being uprooted.’ Its construction, he reasoned, would combine the fit of a jigsaw puzzle with the elegance of a tree trunk’s rings. By cutting each block of stone so it slipped snugly into the next, it would be possible to create an almost unbreakable structure, so neatly assembled that the sea would be unable to find its usual destructive leverage. The only flaw in this dovetailed arrangement was that each layer (or course) of close-fitted blocks had to be connected to the next with small oak pins (trenails.) But otherwise, the basic principle of lighthouse engineering was now intact.
The first four years of construction work were dogged with difficulties. At one point Smeaton, returning from the rock, was blown off course by a storm and found himself heading briskly towards the coast of France. But work continued almost all year round. The first course of stone was laid by 1757 and during the winter months Smeaton attended to the cutting and dressing of the rock and the vetting of the workmen he employed. He had a fanaticism for detail and, to the astonishment of the builders, often flung off his jacket and bowler hat and pitched in with the work himself. By October 1759, the lighthouse was complete. It had taken three years, 1,493 blocks of stone, 1,800 oak trenails and £40,000 to achieve; it weighed 1,000 tons and stood 80 feet tall. In the lantern at the top was the light source – 24 tallow candles. One of these is still on display at Trinity House in London; it is roughly the size of the average dinnertable candle.
Fifty-two years later, on his second tour of the English lights, Robert Stevenson reached the Eddystone light. It was, he found, a disappointment. Throughout his time as an engineer, he had worked with Smeaton and the Eddystone in mind. He had read Smeaton’s Narrative of the Construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse, taken issue with Smeaton’s tree trunk and perfected Smeaton’s dovetails. He had made comparisons, drawn analogies and spent much time in discord or agreement with his paper hero. It was perhaps unsurprising that the reality did not live up to imagination. Once landed, he noted almost peevishly that ‘the appearance of the Eddystone is rather diminutive.’ On the exterior, ‘the faces of the stones are in some instances wasting and the joints are extremely coarse and not