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Towers on a wave-swept rock

Eddystone Lighthouse was built by Trinity House in 1882, the fourth lighthouse to mark the Eddystone Rocks.⁠¹ Trinity House places those rocks 13 miles south west of Plymouth.⁠¹ Trinity House describes the original tower, completed in 1698, as the first lighthouse to be built on a small rock in the open sea.⁠¹

A colourised historic print of a tall granite lighthouse on a rock, with the truncated stump of an older tower on a rock to the left and a small boat in the water — A photochrom of the Douglass Eddystone tower, between 1890 and 1900, with the remaining stump of Smeaton’s tower to the left. Library of Congress. The photographer is not named. A photochrom is a colourised photomechanical print, not a modern colour photograph. The Commons file description wrongly dates the Douglass tower to 1822 and places it in Plymouth Sound; Trinity House dates this tower to 1882, 13 miles south west of Plymouth, and that is the dating used here.Photo: Photographer not stated; Library of Congress photochrom · Public domain · Commons

Rudyerd’s wooden tower was lit in 1709. On the night of 2 December 1755 the roof of the lantern caught fire, and the lighthouse was destroyed.⁠¹ Smeaton’s tower was completed and lit by 24 candles on 16 October 1759.⁠¹ In the 1870s, Trinity House records, cracks appeared in the rock, and the top of Smeaton’s tower was taken down and later re-erected on Plymouth Hoe. The stump still stands on the rock, and it is the stump you can see in the photochrom above, to the left of Douglass’s tower.

A circular engineering plan of interlocking dovetailed stones around a central well, labelled north, south, east and west — “Plan of the 16th course, showing the method of dovetailing,” from Samuel Smiles, Lives of the Engineers, volume 2 (1861), a public-domain technical plate of Smeaton’s Eddystone masonry.Photo: Samuel Smiles, Lives of the Engineers, volume 2, 1861 · Public domain · Commons

Bishop Rock Lighthouse was built by Trinity House in 1858, and further strengthened in 1887, four miles west of the Isles of Scilly.⁠² Longships Lighthouse was built by Trinity House in 1875, to replace a shorter tower on the rocks at the extreme south-west of Britain’s mainland.⁠³

Fastnet, twice

A black-and-white photograph of a banded lighthouse rising from a steep rock in the Atlantic, with steps, a crane and breaking water at the base — Fastnet Rock, photographed by Robert French in about 1897–1900, from the Lawrence Collection at the National Library of Ireland (call number L_ROY_06669). The library marks the plate with no known copyright restrictions. This is the earlier station on the rock. Irish Lights records that the granite tower which exhibits today’s light was established on 27 June 1904.Photo: Robert French; Lawrence Collection, National Library of Ireland · No known copyright restrictions · Commons

An earlier light on the rock was established on 1 January 1854. Irish Lights later judged the original cast-iron tower not strong enough for the site.⁠⁴ Irish Lights records that the present granite tower’s light was established on 27 June 1904, after a five-year construction by William Douglass, Engineer to the Commissioners of Irish Lights.⁠⁴ Fastnet Lighthouse was automated and converted to unwatched at the end of March 1989.⁠⁴

Hook Head

According to tradition, as Irish Lights tells it, Saint Dubhán established a beacon on Hook Point. The same page says that more recent authorities attribute Hook Tower to William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, in 1245.⁠⁵ Irish Lights does not, on that page, call the present tower the oldest lighthouse in Europe, and this site does not either. Tradition and a 1245 attribution are both on the record; they are not the same kind of claim.

Bell Rock and Minot’s Ledge, as the 1911 Britannica has them

A nineteenth-century engraving of a lighthouse in heavy seas, with a sailing boat to the left and spray breaking against the tower — “Bell Rock light house during a storm from the North East,” drawn by J. M. W. Turner and engraved by J. Horsburgh. A public-domain engraving in the Library of Congress (printed 1869). This is a published print, not a photograph of the standing tower.Photo: Drawn by J. M. W. Turner; engraved by J. Horsburgh · Public domain · Commons

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica places the Bell Rock 12 miles off the coast of Forfarshire, and says the tower is submerged to a depth of about 16 ft at high water of spring tides. It names Robert Stevenson as the constructor: work began in 1807, finished in 1810, and the light was first exhibited in 1811. The tower is given as 100 ft in height.⁠⁶

A faded nineteenth-century photograph of a tall stone lighthouse standing in calm water, with a low rock in the foreground — Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse, off Boston Harbor, in a stereograph by J. H. Williams, from the New York Public Library. The original card has two nearly identical images; one half is shown here. The library dates the plate only to a range of about 1859–1885. Public domain.Photo: J. H. Williams · Public domain · Commons

The 1911 Britannica describes Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse as an 89 ft granite tower on a reef off Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, completed in 1860.⁠⁶

A lighthouse that was moved

The black-and-white spiral-striped Cape Hatteras Lighthouse standing in a snowy field under a grey sky, with a small red brick building to the left — Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in the snow, a National Park Service photograph. The 1870 tower was moved 2,900 feet in 1999; this is the tower on its present site. Public domain, as a work of the U.S. federal government. The file’s 2009 timestamp is not treated here as a confirmed date of the snowfall.Photo: National Park Service · Public domain · Commons

The U.S. National Park Service says that in 1999 the Cape Hatteras Light Station, which consists of seven historic structures, was successfully relocated 2,900 feet from the spot on which it had stood since 1870, because of the threat of shoreline erosion.⁠⁷ The same Park Service page records that a severe storm in 1980 washed away the foundation of the first (1803) lighthouse, and that in 1803 that earlier lighthouse had been one mile from the shoreline.⁠⁷