THE EDDYSTONE : FACTS AND FICTIONS. 
191 
THE EDDYSTONE: FACTS AND FICTIONS. 
BY H. B. S. WOODHOUSE. 
(Read 14th February, 1889.) 
The fact that no paper upon this subject has hitherto been laid 
before the members of the Plymouth Institution may perhaps be 
thought a matter of surprise. It must, however, be presumed 
that the earlier adherents of the Society were so familiar with all 
that could be said about it, that the desirableness of bringing it 
forward never entered their minds. When the town of Plymouth 
occupied a space only a little more extended than that which was 
contained within the compass of the walls which enabled its 
inhabitants to stand the assaults of the besiegers for no less than 
three years in the middle of the seventeenth century, the number 
of residents who did not know all about Smeaton's Lighthouse 
must have been few indeed. His building had only been erected 
some fifty-five years at the time this Institution was founded, and 
Plymouth not having become so much of a health or pleasure 
resort as since then, strangers formed but a small proportion of 
the population. Moreover, most of her adult inhabitants were 
then connected with the trade and commerce of the port, or with 
its shipping ; so that those who required to be told anything 
about the lighthouse, or the reef on which it was built, and the 
purposes for which it needed to be placed there, would be very 
few. There are now, however, doubtless many living in the 
enlarged Plymouth of to-day, who have not had the occasion, 
or perhaps the opportunity, of making themselves acquainted 
with the subject, especially as regards events prior to the date of 
Smeaton's work. 
This must be my apology for introducing the subject, and my 
excuse for mingling general facts, of which most of the members 
are aware, with others which are not so well known. 
Notwithstanding the necessity of including well-known details, 
