[Illustration: THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE.]
The following winter was very tempestuous, and the floating light-ship, stationed about two miles from the rock, was driven from its moorings, though it eventually reached harbour in safety. It was the 12th of May before Smeaton, anxious to see how his tower had stood the winter storms, could land on the rock. He was delighted to find that the entire work remained intact, as he had left it. At the end of this season, the twenty-ninth course of stones had been laid, and the apartments of the lighthouse-keepers commenced. While living at Plymouth, Smeaton used to come out upon the Hoe(55) with his telescope and, from the spot where the Spanish Armada was first descried making for the English coast, peer out towards the rocks on one of which his lighthouse stood. “There were still many who persisted in asserting that no building erected of stone could possibly stand upon the Eddystone; and again and again the engineer, in the dim grey of the morning, would come out and peer through his telescope at his deep-sea lamp-post. Sometimes he had to wait long, until he could see a tall white pillar of spray shoot up into the air. Thank God! it was still safe. Then, as the light grew, he could discern his building, temporary house and all, standing firm amidst the waters; and, thus far satisfied, he could proceed to his workshops, his mind relieved for the day.”
The winter following the third season was spent by Smeaton in London, where he made the designs for the cast and wrought iron and copper works of the lantern, the glass, and rails of the balcony, which were carried out under his own eye. The ensuing season proved so stormy that it was the 5th of July before a landing could again be made on the rock, but from this point the work proceeded with such rapidity that in thirteen days two entire rooms were erected, and by the 17th of August the last pieces of the corona were set, and the forty-sixth and last course of masonry laid, bringing the tower to its specified height of seventy feet. “The last mason’s work done was the cutting out of the words ‘_Laus Deo_’ upon the last stone set over the door of the lantern. Round the upper store-room upon the course under the ceiling, had been cut, at an earlier period, ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.’ The iron-work of the balcony and the lantern were next erected, and, over all, the gilt ball, the screws of which Smeaton fixed with his own hands, ‘that in case,’ he says, ‘any of them had not held quite tight and firm, the circumstance might not have been slipped over without my knowledge.’ Moreover, this piece of work was dangerous as well as delicate, being performed at a height of some hundred and twenty feet above the sea. Smeaton fixed the screws while standing on four boards nailed together, resting on the cupola; his assistant, Roger Cornthwaite, placing himself on the opposite side, so as to balance his weight whilst he proceeded with the operation. Smeaton worked with the men in fitting the lantern and interior arrangements. The light was first exhibited on the night of the 16th of October, 1759. About three years after its completion, one of the most terrible storms ever known raged for days along the south-west coast; and though incalculable ruin was inflicted upon harbours and shipping by the hurricane, all the damage done to the lighthouse was repaired by a little gallipot of putty.”
