10. There have been four different lighthouses on Eddystone Rocks
Eddystone Rocks lie about 12 miles south-southwest of Plymouth Sound, one of the finest natural harbors in Great Britain and for centuries a strategically important naval facility and anchorage. During spring tides the Rocks are completely submerged and they were the cause of innumerable shipwrecks, both on the Rocks themselves and in the shoals of the French coast, where mariners trying to avoid them found themselves. The first attempt to build a lighthouse on the Rocks began in 1696, by Henry Winstanley, though his efforts were impeded by a French privateer who took him prisoner and destroyed the work in progress. Louis XIV ordered Winstanley freed, commenting, “France is at war with England, not with humanity”. The tower was completed and the light established in 1698. It was destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703, and Winstanley was lost at sea.
A second tower was completed in 1709, which remained in place until it was destroyed by fire in 1755. A third tower, designed by John Smeaton and built of granite blocks secured to each other through dovetail joints was built beginning in 1756. Smeaton’s tower remained in use until 1877, when it began to shake alarmingly in high wave conditions. Erosion beneath the rocks upon which it was based was the cause, and most of the tower was dismantled, though the foundations were too stoutly made to disassemble. They remain in place today. Construction of the fourth Eddystone Light began in 1879, with early work accomplished between the tides. It was completed in 1882, became fully automated in 1982 (the first offshore lighthouse to be automated by Trinity House), and remains in use in the twenty-first century, its beacon shining forth 161 feet above the hazards posed by the Eddystone Rocks.
