82 rnrsiCAL geogeapht of the sea. 



solidity of the fabric. The elements took him at his word, for 

 while on a visit of inspection to his lighthouse the dreadful 

 storm of November 26, 1703, arose, the only storm which in 

 our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane. 

 "No other tempest," says Macaulay in his Essay on Addison, 

 " was ever in this country the occasion of a Parliamentary 

 address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. 

 Large mansions had been blown down. One Prelate had been 

 buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had 

 presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of 

 families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large 

 trees and the ruins of houses still attested in all the southern 

 counties the fury of the blast." No -wonder that a tempest 

 like this swept away the ill-constructed lighthouse like the 

 "unsubstantial fabric of a vision," and that neither poor Mr. 

 Winstanley nor any of his companions survived to recount the 

 terrors of that dreadful night. 



Strange to say, the task of rebuilding the Eddystone light- 

 house, which was now felt as a national necessity, once more 

 devolved, not upon a professed architect, but upon a Mr. 

 Eudyerd, a linendraper of Ludgate Hill, the son of a Cornish 

 vagrant, who had raised himself by his talents and industry from 

 rags and mendicancy to a station of honourable competence. 

 The choice, however, was not ill made, for, with the assistance of 

 two competent shipwrights, the London tradesman constructed 

 an edifice which, though mainly of timber, was so firmly bolted 

 to the rock with iron branches that for nearly half a century it 

 resisted the fury of the billows, and might have withstood them 

 for many a year to come had it not been rapidly and completely 

 destroyed by fire. This catastrophe, which happened on 

 December 2, 1755, was marked by a strange accident, for while 

 one of the light-keepers was engaged in throwing up water 

 four yards higher than himself, a quantity of lead, dissolved 

 by the heat of the flames, suddenly rushed like a torrent from 

 the roof, and falling upon his head, face, and shoulders, 

 burnt him in a dreadful manner. Having been conveyed 

 to the hospital at Plymouth, he invariably told the surgeon 

 who attended him, that he had swallowed part of the lead 

 while looking upward; the reality of the assertion seemed 

 quite incredible, for who could suppose it possible that any 



