156 EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE. 



fabric wanting some slight repairs, and Mr. Winstanley went down to 

 Plymouth to superintend them. The opinion of the common people 

 was that the building would not be of long duration. Mr. Winstanley 

 held, however, different sentiments ; being among his friends, previous to 

 his going off with his workmen to make the repairs, it was said to him, 

 that one day or other the light-house would certainly overset. To this 

 he is said to have replied, " that he was so well assured of the strength 

 of his light-house, that he should only wish to be there in the greatest 

 storm that ever blew under the face of the heavens, that he might see 

 what effect it would have upon the building." In this wish he was too 

 fatally gratified : for while he was there with his workmen and light- 

 keepers, that dreadful storm began, which raged the most violently upon 

 the night of the 26th November, 1703 ; and of all accounts of the kind 

 with which history furnishes us, we have none which has exceeded this in 

 Great Britain, or was more injurious or extensive in its devastations. The 

 next morning when the storm was abated, nothing of the light-house was 

 to be seen, it having been totally swept away by the waves of the sea ! 



The single thing left was a piece of iron chain, which had got so 

 wedged into a cleft that it stuck there till ii was taken out, more than 

 fifty years afterwards. 



By all accounts this light-house was a polygonal (or many cornered) 

 building of stone, of about a hundred feet in height, after it had received 

 its last additions. The light-house had not long been down, when the 

 Winchelsea, a homeward bound Virginian, was split upon the rock 

 where that building stood, and most of the men were drowned. The 

 great utility of the late light-house had been sufficiently evident to those 

 for whose use it had been erected ; and the loss of a large merchant 

 vessel coming from America proved a powerful spur to such as were 

 interested, to exert themselves for its restoration. The undertaker was a 

 Captain Lovell, or Lovett, who took a lease of the rock for 99 years, to 

 commence from the day that the light should be exhibited ; the Captain 

 engaged Mr. John Rudyerd to be his engineer or architect. The building 

 was began in July, 1706; a light was up on the 28th July, 1708, and it was 

 tompletely finished in 1709. The quantity of materials used in the 

 construction, was 500 tons of stone, 1,200 tons of timber, 80 tons of 

 iron, 35 tons of lead ; of tre-nails, screws, and rock bolts, 2,500 each. 

 Louis 14th, being at war with England during the building of this 

 light-house, a French privateer made prisoners of the men at work upon 

 it, and carried them, together with their tools, to France, and the captain 

 was in expectation of a reward for the achievement. While the captives 



