MARITIME HISTORY 



jealous trade rivals. Sir John was already a large proprietor in lighthouses, and offered to surrender a 

 licence for four on the east coast if he should be allowed to erect one at the Scillies, but the Trinity 

 House had already pre-empted that station from the king. Probably intending speculators realized that 

 there was no hope of a licence for the Lizard except under an arrangement with the Trinity House, 

 and there is no trace of any further application until 1748. In that year Thomas Fonnereau came 

 to an agreement with the corporation by which on erecting a tower, the predecessor of the present 

 eastern tower, with four turrets to show the light from four coal fires, he was to hold the lease, at 

 80 a year rent, for sixty-one years, at the expiration of which term the Trinity House would come 

 into possession. The patent is dated 22 May, 1751, and the light was first shown on 22 August, 

 1752 ; l on 1 6 January, 1812, the coal fire was superseded by oil, and in 1878 oil by electricity. 



The indefatigable Sir John Coryton had in 1665 made proposals in vain for a lighthouse on 

 the Scillies ; the Trinity House, supported by the East India Company, obtained an Order in Council 

 of 24 June, 1680, for that station. 2 They immediately sent two of the Elder Brethren to consult 

 with Sir Francis Godolphin as to the most suitable place, and St. Agnes was selected. On 16 October 

 a circular letter was directed to merchants in Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean, stating that 

 the fire would be lit on the 3Oth instant, the toll being a halfpenny a ton on English, and a penny 

 on foreign ships, each way. The commencement was not auspicious, for in December a Virginian 

 trader was lost on the reefs, and the lighthouse keeper, one Hoskins, was found to have been neglectful 

 or worse, and to have stolen what part of the cargo he could come at. 3 There were other troubles also ; 

 the Isle of Wight shipowners strongly objected to paying for a Scilly light, talked of forming a 

 ' club ' to refuse payment, and a further Order in Council was necessary to enforce the payment of 

 the dues. Then the Trinity House became involved in a lawsuit with one Purnock, who seems 

 to have claimed a prior grant, and with some justice, as an Order in Council of 16 May, 1683, ordered 

 the corporation to pay him twenty shillings yearly during his term. The history of the St. Agnes 

 light is for a long time one of suspicion of negligence and connivance with wreckers on the part of 

 the keepers, and of complaints of the dimness of the fire. Heath, who wrote his account of the 

 Scillies in 1750, says that he had known the fire to be not even lit, and, if lit, often not to be seen 

 from St. Mary's. This can have been no occasional occurrence, for in 1716 the light was so well 

 known to be untrustworthy that William Whiston proposed that ' a ball of fire ' should be thrown 

 up from a mortar four times a night in its place. 4 In 1790 St. Agnes was made a revolving oil 

 light, and the original tower is still in use. 



The Trinity House obtained a patent for the Longships, dated 30 June, 1791, entitling them to 

 charge a halfpenny and a penny a ton respectively on British and foreign shipping passing it. On 29 Sep- 

 tember, 1795, they granted a lease of it to Lieutenant Henry Smith for fifty years at a rent of 100 

 a year. The average profits drawn from the light for 1819-21 were 3,017 a year net. In 1822 it 

 was the subject of a chancery suit, and in consequence of the strictures of parliamentary committees 

 on the bad policy of granting leases, the Trinity House offered, in 1825, to purchase the remainder 

 of the term, but the lessees refused then to sell. In 1836, however, the interest in the nine and a 

 half years yet to run was bought for 40,696. The Longships, rebuilt in 1873, was converted in 

 1883 into an occulting light. 6 The Sevenstones is marked by a lightship which was established in 

 September, 1841, and the first vessel stationed there pitched so fearfully in the heavy seas off the 

 Land's End that the master was once thrown from the tiller clean over the companion. The first 

 attempt at a lighthouse on the Bishop Rock was washed away on the night of 6 February, 1850, 

 and the present structure, built from the plans of Mr. James Walker, was established in 1858. 

 The situation is one of the most exposed in the world to pounding seas, and spray has been known 

 often to go over the old light no ft. above high-water mark. It was constructed of solid granite 

 to 45 ft. above high water, but cracks developed in this, and it was encased in masonry in 1886, 

 the tower, carrying a four-second flash light, being at the same time raised to 183 ft. The first 

 beacon on the Wolf Rock was put up in 1795. That and its successors were carried away after 

 lives of varying but short duration. The last one, finished in 1840 at a cost of 11,298, 

 consisted only of a cone of masonry with a mast and globe of iron painted red ; it took five years in 

 building, during which period only 302^- working hours could be obtained. Although so expensive, 



1 Part. Papers (1834), xii, 351. 



1 Orders in Council ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. viii, App. i, 257, 261. The Phoenix, East Indiaman, had 

 been lost recently on the islands. 



3 This was considered a deliberate case of wrecking, the fire not being lit until the ship was on the rocks. 

 The Trinity House ordered that no Cornishman was to be employed at St. Agnes (Hardy, British Lighthouses, 

 p. 196). ' Heath, p. 1 60. 



5 Par!. Papers (1822) xxi, 497 ; (1834) xii, 37 ; (1845), ix, 6. The lantern of the old lighthouse was 

 79 ft. above high-water mark, but seas have been known to lift the cowl and extinguish several of the lamps, 

 and the light was often obscured by the seas (Ibid. (1861), xxv, 72). In connexion with this light, 

 James Cobb's story, The Watchers on the Longships, said to be based on facts, should be read. 



499. 



