[Illustration: WINSTANLEY’S LIGHTHOUSE AT THE EDDYSTONE.]
The fourth year was devoted to strengthening the foundations and enlarging the structure, which, when completed, resembled nothing so much as “a Chinese pagoda, with open galleries and fantastic projections.” The gallery around the lantern was so wide and open, that it was possible, when the sea ran high, for a six-oared boat to be lifted by the waves and driven through it. Such an edifice could not long resist the fury of the waters or the violence of the gale; but, at least, it served to prove that a lighthouse _could_ be erected on the rock, and its achievement was one of the most laudable enterprises which any heroic mind could undertake, for it filled the breast of the mariner with new hope.
Winstanley was proud of his work, and so convinced, it is said, of its entire solidity, that he expressed a wish to be beneath its roof in the greatest storm that ever blew under the face of heaven, convinced that it could not shake one joist or beam. He had his presumptuous wish fulfilled. With his workmen and keepers he had taken up his abode in the lighthouse, when a terrible gale blew up, and on the 26th of November attained to an unparalleled excess of fury. In truth, it was of so frightful a character that contemporary annals vividly record its destructive effects, and the alarm it produced.
All through that memorable night the tempest raged. As soon as morning came the people of Plymouth hastened to the beach, and turned their gaze instinctively towards the Eddystone. But no structure crowned the rock, over which the waves were tossing and swirling all unchecked. The lighthouse was swept away, and no vestiges remained of its adventurous occupants.
The question now arose, Who was to rebuild the lighthouse? Three years passed before it was answered; and then the task was taken up by one Captain Lovet, who obtained a ninety-nine year‘ lease from the Trinity Corporation, and immediately engaged as his architect a _silk-mercer_ on Ludgate Hill, named John Rudyerd. What reasons guided Lovet in his curious choice we cannot ascertain; probably Rudyerd had given some signal proofs of mechanical ingenuity; but, at all events, the choice proved a felicitous one. Rudyerd submitted for the new building an elegant and admirable design; instead of a polygon, he chose a circle for the outline, and instead of the projections and ornaments with which Winstanley had arrested every breeze that blew, he studied the utmost simplicity, so as to offer wind or wave the slightest possible resistance.