Eddystone Lighthouse: The remarkable story of the UK’s first offshore lighthouse
Pioneering building was first illuminated on this day in 1698
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Your support makes all the difference.First illuminated on this day 321 years ago, the historic Eddystone Lighthouse is celebrated in today’s Google Doodle.
The wooden structure around 14 miles from the coast of Plymouth was developed by the wealthy English merchant, inventor and engineer Henry Winstanley.
He hoped it would be able to withstand the “greatest storm that ever blew” and provide safe passage for boats passing by the treacherous Eddystone reef, which had caused numerous shipwrecks.
Construction began in July 1696 but suffered an early setback when a French privateer ship kidnapped Mr Winstanley, took him hostage and destroyed the foundations of the lighthouse.
France’s King Louis XIV promptly ordered his release, noting that his country was “at war with England, not with humanity”.
Mr Winstanley returned to work to rebuild the tower.
Rising 80 feet above the reef, the octagonal lighthouse was illuminated by 60 candles and a “great hanging lamp”. It also featured a large, ornate weather vane.
It underwent major repairs after being battered by heavy winds and storms in its first winter, before being officially completed in 1699, at the cost of around £5,000.
The lighthouse was destroyed four years later, during 1703’s historic Great Storm which killed an estimated 8,000 people and caused major damage to vast swathes of the UK. To this date, it is the only hurricane to reach Britain at full speed.
Mr Winstanley was inside the lighthouse when the storm hit, along with two lighthouse keepers. Their bodies were never found.
The tower has been rebuilt three times since, with the second version falling victim to a fire in 1755 after the roof of the lantern caught ablaze.
The most recent incarnation was completed in 1882 by the engineer Sir James Douglass, ensuring that Mr Winstanley’s vision lives on.
The lighthouse was immortalised in Herman Meville’s iconic seafaring novel Moby-Dick – “How it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse” – and a well-known sea shanty “My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light/And he slept with a mermaid one fine night”.
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