O dear Plymouth town, and O blue Plymouth Sound!
O where is your equal on earth to be found?
Eddystone Lighthouse, the top of which could just be seen from the Hoe,
stood on a group of rocks nine miles from the Cornish Coast and fourteen
miles from Plymouth. These rocks were covered at high water by the sea,
and were so dangerous to ships moving in and out of Plymouth or along
the coast, that a lighthouse of wood was built on them in the year 1700,
which was washed away by a great storm three years afterwards, when the
lighthouse people perished as well as the unfortunate architect,
Winstanley, who happened to be there on a visit at the time. In 1709 a
second and a stronger wooden lighthouse was built by Rudyard, but the
progress of the work was delayed owing to the workmen being carried on
to France by a French ship and lodged in a prison there. King Louis XIV,
when he heard of this, chivalrously ordered the Englishmen to be
liberated and their captors to be put in the prison in their places,
remarking that "though he was at war with England, he was not at war
with mankind." So the lighthouse was completed, and remained until 1755,
when it was destroyed by fire.
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