The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-06-28 00:00:00

STOURBRIDGE OBSERVER.

has often been compared to a Chinese pagoda,
but its model seems rather to have been the
graceful towers with which Wren adorned the City
churches—at any rate, it is easy to discern in
Winstanley's design the prevailing taste of the
time. He had evidently, however, not sufficiently
calculated the force of the waves in a storm at
the Eddystone, which Smeaton declares to be greater
than that of any sea in any pert of the world of which
he had read; and, though he produced an elegant
structure, he took no pains to adapt it to the situation
it was to occupy. He knew and declared that the sea
often flies to a height of 200 feet above the rock—a
fact which Smeaton confirms from his own observa-
tions ; but he nevertheless surrounded his tower with
all kinds of projections on which the water could act
with overwhelming force, and he actually gave it a
spacious open gallery, through which it was said that a
six-oared boat could be washed by the sea and carried
without injury to the other side. Nevertheless,
Winstanley had lull confidence in the sta-
bility of his tower, and often expressed a
wish that he might be in it "during the greatest
storm that ever blew under the face of the heavens."
His wish was fulfilled to the letter, for he was in the
lighthouse during the great historical storm of Novem-
ber, 1703. This was the storm referred to by Addison
in his poem on Marlborough's Campaign' "such as of
late o'er pale Brittania passed," and described by
Macaulay as having ravaged England with the force
of a West Indian hurricane. In this storm the
lighthouse was destroyed and Winstanley perished
with it. The next attempt to build a lighthouse
on the Eddystone was made a few years later
by Rudyerd, a runaway Cornish boy, who had
established himself as a silk mercer in Lon-
don. Rudyerd's tower was a truncated cone of
stout timbers bolted together and strengthened
at the base by solid courses of stone ingeniously
fastened to the rock. It was not as yet thought
practicable to use stone exclusively, but Rudyerd's
tower was strongly built, and his woodwork was ad-
mitted by Smeaton to be well designed, and to exhibit
a remarkable specimen of the shipwright's art well
applied to its special purpose. He was very success-
ful, too,
He
his method of bolting his masonry to the
rock. He appropriated, if he did not invent, the
lewis," a contrivance for fastening bolts in stone,
and still used for similar purposes, as will be seen
from our account of the Princes visit on Saturday to
the preparatory works in Plymouth Sound. After
lasting for over forty years, Rudyerd's tower fell a
victim to the usual fate of wooden structures, and
was destroyed by lire in 1755.

Shortly a- fter he destruction of the second Eddy-
stone lighthouse, John Srneaton, at that time little
known, save as..a mathematical instrument maker and
a skilled mechanic, was employed to design a new one.
He has left on record a copious and instructive ac-
count of his work, both in its origin and its execution.
Discarding the misplaced elegances of Winstanley, he
adopted the cone of Rudyerd for his model, but im-
proved on it by giving it a gradual curve from
base to summit, so as to offer the least resist-
ance to the waves and to turn them harm-
lessly upwards. He was led to this idea by
a contemplation of the manner in which an
oak tree rises from the ground, and he also determined
to graft his tower on the rock after the fashion in which
a lateral branch is inserted into the parent tree. This
conception necessarily led to the exclusive use of stone,
which was Smeaton's second innovation. His third
and greatest Principle of all was the method of dove-
tailing each stone of the structure into its neighbours
and into the solid rock at the base, so that no one could
be moved unless all the others gave way. This prin-
ciple has since heen followed in all similar structures,
so that Smeaton may be said to have invented at one
stroke the final and perfect method of building towers
to resist the utmost force of the sea. His one mistake
seems to have been made in the heavy cornice sur-
mounting the tower and supporting the gallery of the
lantern. When the sea breaks upon and over the
lighthouse the waves are found to exert a powerful
lifting force on the cornice, and it is only at this point
that Smeaten's structure has ever shown signs of giving
way. Until the cornice was reduced a few years ago,
the sea in heavy gales used to force itself through the
masonry, and to penetrate to the interior of the tower
immediately beneath the cornice. In some light
houses recently built, and notably in that on
the Wolf Rock, constructed by Mr. Douglass,
the consulting engineer of the Trinity House,
to whom the building of the new tower at
the Eddystone has been intrusted, this defect is
remedied by again carrying the curve of the tower out-
wards after it has reached its smallest diameter above
the middle of the structure. Thus the waves are
gradually carried outwards by the swelling eurve, and
the force of their impact on the cornice is dissipated.
In the new lighthouse the same principle will be
followed, and the upper portion of the tower will also
be constructed on an elliptical section, so as to give
the smallest surface of resistance in the direction
from which the sea is known to run with the
greatest force. These, however, are minor details
of structure, and the great fundamental principles
laid down by Smeaton, and embodied by him in
a building which has braved the gales of over a
hundred years, will be faithfully carried out in the
new lighthouse. When the new building is finished,
Smeaton's tower will be taken down to the level of
high water. But though his building will have die.
appeared, his name will still remain imperishably
connected with the Eddystone. He first showed what
it was possible to do, and how it could best be done;
and he did so with few of the mechanical appliances
which his successors can command in modern times.
Thus, whether his tower or another constructed on the
same principles sheds its beneficent light from the
Eddystone, he will always deserve to be remembered
as one of the few to whom it is given to create a
new art of the highest service to man and to lazing it
at once to perfection.