The Story of Our Lighthouses and Lightships
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E-STORy-OF-OUR HTHOUSES'i AMLIGHTSHIPS BY. W DAMS BH THE STORY OF OUR LIGHTHOUSES LIGHTSHIPS Descriptive and Historical W. II. DAVENPORT ADAMS THOMAS NELSON AND SONS London, Edinburgh, and Nnv York I/K Contents. I. LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY, ... ... ... ... 9 II. LIGHTHOUSE ADMINISTRATION, ... ... ... ... 31 III. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OP LIGHTHOUSES, ... ... 39 IV. THE ILLUMINATING APPARATUS OF LIGHTHOUSES, ... ... 46 V. LIGHTHOUSES OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND DESCRIBED, ... 73 VI. LIGHTHOUSES OF IRELAND DESCRIBED, ... ... ... 255 VII. SOME FRENCH LIGHTHOUSES, ... ... ... ... 288 VIII. LIGHTHOUSES OF THE UNITED STATES, ... ... ... 309 IX. LIGHTHOUSES IN OUR COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES, ... 319 X. FLOATING LIGHTS, OR LIGHTSHIPS, ... ... ... 339 XI. LANDMARKS, BEACONS, BUOYS, AND FOG-SIGNALS, ... 355 XII. LIFE IN THE LIGHTHOUSE, ... ... ... 374 LIGHTHOUSES. CHAPTER I. LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. T)OPULARLY, the lighthouse seems to be looked A upon as a modern invention, and if we con- sider it in its present form, completeness, and efficiency, we shall be justified in limiting its history to the last centuries but as soon as men to down two ; began go to the sea in ships, they must also have begun to ex- perience the need of beacons to guide them into secure channels, and warn them from hidden dangers, and the pressure of this need would be stronger in the night even than in the day. So soon as a want is man's invention hastens to it and strongly felt, supply ; we may be sure, therefore, that in the very earliest ages of civilization lights of some kind or other were introduced for the benefit of the mariner. It may very well be that these, at first, would be nothing more than fires kindled on wave-washed promontories, 10 LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. or on hill-tops* commanding clear and extensive views of the waters but we be certain neighbouring ; may that the difficulties in the way of maintaining such fires in stormy weather would speedily suggest the construction of some permanent shelter or protection. And therefore I see no reason to doubt the statement that long before Greece had become a maritime nation, light-towers, which served as landmarks during the day as well as beacons during the night, had been planted along the coast-line of Lower Egypt. The first, however, of which we have any certain infor- mation was the celebrated Pharos of Alexandria, so celebrated that its name is very generally applied to lighthouses in our own day, and exists in the French Phare. It was erected about 280 B.C., during the reign of King Ptolemseus Philadelphus, on the strip of shining calcareous rock lying about a mile off Alexandria that sheltered both its ancient ports the Greater Harbour and the Haven of Happy Return from the fury of the north wind and the occasional high tides of the Mediterranean. Its site was a kind of rocky peninsula at the east end of the island, and it stood conspicuous from its great height and the whiteness of the stone of which it was constructed. Whether the light it sup- was obtained plied from an ordinary fire, or some more effective system of illumination, we have no means of * See the in passage Homer (" Iliad," xix. 375) : " As to seamen o'er the wave is borne The watch-fire's light which, high among the hills, Some shepherd kindles in his lonely fold." LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. 13 determining; though we can hardly suppose that to " the former Lucan, in his Pharsalia," would have ap- " plied the word lampada," or that Pliny would have expressed his fear lest, on account of its steadiness (" continuatione ignium "), the mariner should mistake it for a star. The Alexandrian Pharos was probably destroyed by the Turkish conquerors of Egypt. That it existed in the twelfth century we know from the elaborate de- scription of it recorded by the Arabian writer Edrisi, " who says : This pharos is without its like in the world for skill of construction and to solidity ; since, say nothing of the fact that it is built of excellent stone, the courses are united by molten lead, and so firmly fitted together as to form an indissoluble mass. We ascend to the summit by an internal staircase. About half-way the building becomes much narrower, and from the gallery rises to the top with a continually increasing contraction, until at last it may be compassed within a man's arms. The staircase from the gallery is, therefore, of narrowing dimensions also. In every part it is pierced with windows to give light to persons making use of it." He adds, in language reminding us of Pliny's, that from a distance the Pharos-ray was so like a star which had risen upon the horizon, that mariners, misled by it, steered towards the other coast, and were frequently wrecked upon the sands of Mar- morica. The famous Colossus, or gigantic statue of Apollo, 14 LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. designed by the sculptor Chares, and erected at Rhodes, has been by some authorities described as a Pharos; but for this statement we confess ourselves unable to find any authority. We pass on, therefore, to the light-tower which the Romans raised on the heights is still of Dover. In a shattered state, it extant ; and Mr. Puckle describes it* as "a massive shell, the inner face of its walls vertical and squared, the outside with a tendency to a conical form, which was probably at one time much more distinct, allowing for the quantities of external masonry and facing which by degrees must have fallen or been hewn away." The basement alone, however, is of Roman work. The octagonal chamber above was added in the reign of Henry VIII. Its dimensions are about fourteen feet square, and its materials, according to Mr. Puckle, tufa, concrete, and red tile-brick. There is little doubt but that it was raised for the of a Pharos purposes ; but as, from its elevated position, it must have con- stantly been shrouded in mists, its fires were probably discontinued immediately after the Conquest. In course of time it was applied to military uses, the lower chamber being converted into a guard-room; and of late years it has served as a store-house. It is thirty- three feet in diameter, and was formerly about seventy- two feet high. The first Pharos which performed its duties in a reg- ular manner seems to have been that which Lesches, * Rev. J. Puckle, "Church and Fortress of Dover Castle," ed. 1864. LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. 15 " the author of the Little Iliad" (who flourished about the 9th Olympiad), erected on the promontory of Sigeum, at the entrance of the Hellespont. It is fig- ured in the Iliac Table. Though the most ancient in our records, the honour THE TOWER AT DOVER. was not reserved to it of bequeathing its name to its successors, any more than to Columbus the glory of leaving his name to the New World. This honour was gained, as I have said, by the mighty tower elevated on the island of Pharos, which served as a model for some of the most celebrated lighthouses erected in later 16 LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. times. Such was the case with the Pharos built by the Emperor Claudian at Ostia, which appears to have been the most remarkable of any on the Latin coast. It was situated upon a breakwater, or artificial island, which occupied the mid space between the two huge * and its ruins moles that formed the harbour ; were extant as late as the fifteenth century, when they were visited by Pope Pius II. Not less stately was the Pharos which guided the seamen into the port of Puteoli, the emporium of the foreign trade of im- perial Rome; nor that which Augustus erected at the entrance of his new harbour of Ravenna, and Pliny describes with so much enthusiasm nor ; that, again, which shed its warning light from the mole of Messina over the of and the rock of whirlpool Charybdis Scylla ; nor that which blazed in the island of Caprese, and was destroyed by an earthquake shortly before the death of Tiberius. Dionysius of Byzantium f describes a celebrated lighthouse planted at the mouth of the river Chry- sorrhoas, where the latter mingles its waters with those of the Thracian Bosphorus (the modern channel of Con- " " stantinople). On the crest of the hill," he says, the base of which is washed by the Chrysorrhoas, may be seen the Timean tower, of an extraordinary height; and from its summit the spectator beholds a vast ex- * Suetonius, "Claudian," 20. t Author of an "Ava-rrXovs ^ovirbpov, circa A.D. 190. (241) LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. 17 panse of sea. It has been built for the safety of the fires kindled for their which navigator, being guidance ; was all the more necessary because the shores of this sea are without ports, and no anchor can reach its A ROMAN PHAROS. (From a Medal in the D'Estrtes' Collection.} bottom. But the barbarians of the coast lighted other fires on the loftiest points of the coast, to deceive the mariner, and profit by his shipwreck. At present," " adds our author, the tower is partly ruined, and no lantern is lighted in it." (241) 18 LIGHTHOUSES OF ANTIQUITY. Strabo refers in exaggerated terms to a superb light- tower of stone at Capio, or Apio, near the harbour of Menestheus the modern Puerto de Santa Maria. It stood on a rocky headland, nearly surrounded by the sea, and served as a guide for vessels through the shal- low channels at the mouth of the Guadalquivir.* What was the form of the Roman light-towers? This is a question not easily answered, when we re- member that Herodian compares them to the cata- of the The were falques emperors.