PLYMOUTH SOUND: ITS TIDAL CURRENTS. 287 
bottom. Sir John Rennie in his report remarks on the height of 
the Breakwater: ‘‘ The top should be about ten yards broad, at the 
level of ten feet above low-water spring tides. It may however 
on trial be found necessary to carry it higher; but this will be 
ascertained during the execution of the work, when the effects of 
the sea on it will be seen, and it may then be carried to such 
further height as may be found necessary.” The top of the Break- 
water is built 21 feet above low-water spring tides; 11 feet higher 
than the height mentioned in the report. 
Whether or not the Breakwater is too low, I think that if the 
statements reported to have been made by the crews of the unfor- 
tunate ships wrecked at Plymouth during the late gale are facts, 
there can be no doubt that the Breakwater Lighthouse is too low, 
in such a storm. The keepers of this house reported that the lamp 
was generally enveloped in spray during the storm, and their 
testimony is only too sadly borne out by the crews, or rather 
survivors of the crews, of the ill-fated ships. The crew of the 
ship which stranded near the Lighthouse did not see the light till 
they had struck the Breakwater, and the captain of the steamer 
which ran ashore the same night near the Mewstone has a similar 
report on the invisibility of the light. It seems that he was off 
Plymouth Sound when the gale overtook him, and being lightly 
laden, could not keep his vessel head-on to the gale. He then ran in 
for Plymouth, keeping a look-out for the Breakwater Lighthouse, 
and not having seen it, on striking the rocks was of opinion that 
he had taken the coast just under Rame Head. Now in fact he 
had drifted past, and at no great distance from, the light he so 
eagerly looked out for. This is a serious matter, although such 
storms only come once in five, ten, or even twenty years. 
At the recent meeting of the British Association, Mr. Townshend, 
in his paper on the Breakwater, mentioned that during a south- 
west gale, eight years ago, two concrete blocks, weighing 
twenty-four tons each, and a limestone block, thirty-five tons, 
were capsized, and in one tide swept completely over the 
Breakwater; and in the last gale a ship of twelve hundred tons 
burthen was swept completely over the mound. These facts ought 
to give us some conception of the immense tear and wear a break- 
water is exposed to, and hence the nature of the defence it 
affords the Sound. It is not at all surprising, with such seas 
running on the Breakwater, that there is during storms a very 
