Lighthouses

Now, some time before the monastic dissolution, there had been founded in Deptford Church a guild or fraternity of sailors who undertook to watch over the interests of all concerned in shipping. This guild, dedicated to the honour of the Trinity, had, by the time of which we are speaking, or a little later—say the opening years of the reign of James I—come to be known by the name we know it to-day, the Trinity House, and had developed into a rich and powerful corporation possessed of important royal charters, regulating the general management of navigation, and supporting and administering a number of exceedingly useful charities.

But this great corporation was ambitious, jealous of the powers it possessed, and greedy to usurp more; the superintendence of the buoys and beacons which marked out channels by day had become vested in it, and its governing body alleged that it was also possessed of the sole right of establishing lighthouses.

The question had arisen in respect to one of the lighthouse schemes we have just mentioned. It had been proposed, as pointed out, not from charity, but as a commercial speculation. Persons had come forward and said they were willing to establish a lighthouse at such and such a place, and to maintain a light there throughout the night, in return for certain tolls which they should levy on passing ships; and they had applied to the sovereign for the necessary licence to gather the toll, and had received the desired warrant. But, said the Trinity House, if anybody is to have this privilege, we will; the right to erect lighthouses and gather money for their support is surely vested in us by our various charters and Acts of Parliament!

So began a very pretty squabble, that did not die out till hard on the end of the last century, between the Crown, the Trinity House, and the private lighthouse speculator or builder. The wealthy shipowners, many of whom were probably also colliery owners, became alarmed at the number of lighthouse projects that were quickly launched. It was all very well to give a voluntary contribution to support one or two lighthouses at specially dangerous points, but on the whole it paid better to lose a ship or two now and then, and a few men’s lives, than be put to a regular fixed charge for the safety of navigation. That was their view, and as the Trinity House Board was largely composed of men whose interests were identical, that was their view also. Lighthouses were considered a luxury, and if bestowed at all the Board must be the bestowers, and the bestowals be made as seldom as possible.

Debates in Parliament and discussions in the Privy Council followed, and the opinion of the law officers of the crown was taken. The general impression seemed to be that the Trinity House was really charged with the erection and maintenance of coast lights, but that it could not impose rates for so doing. If it wanted to do that, it must get a special patent or licence from the crown, and this the crown might give either to the Trinity House or to any private individual.

And so the squabble went on till towards the end of the eighteenth century, and every lighthouse scheme emanating from a private person was opposed with ruthless vigour by the Trinity House. The watchful care of the present corporation for the interests of navigation, the perfect system of its machinery, and the public spirit of all concerned in its management, stand out in pleasant contrast to the policy and action of the Trinity House of the past, when schemes for lighting the Lizard, St. Catherine’s, the Forelands, the Goodwins, Dungeness, the Spurn, the Farne Islands, and a host of others, were condemned as ‘needless,’ ‘useless,’ or ‘dangerous,’ and ‘a burthen and hindrance’ to navigation.

But despite opposition and hostility, lighthouses, for which rates were gathered, were built in considerable numbers, so that by the first half of the seventeenth century these welcome signals to the mariner broke forth into the gloom of night from many a dangerous headland of the English coast. Of course they were not erected in positions that called for the display of great engineering skill; reefs and shoals that lay far out at sea had to go unmarked till much more recent times. The ever-shifting Goodwins drew forth suggestions for indicating their dangers as early as the days of Queen Bess, but the suggestions emanated from those whose enterprise was greater than their capacity, and came to nought. The Eddystone lighthouse, fourteen miles from shore, was really the first great engineering triumph connected with coast lighting, and Winstanley, with all his pedantry, deserves a niche in the Temple of Fame for having erected a lighthouse there at all!

Floating lights, or lightships, were, I think, projected as early as 1623, though the project was not then actually carried into effect[1]; and they were proposed again, as ‘a novelty,’ half a century later at the Nore. But the Trinity House laughed at the suggestion, and the Nore remained without a light till 1730, or thereabouts, when the first lightship actually established was anchored there.

But it is not fair to say thus much and no more about the Trinity House. Its history was written not long since by Mr. Barrett, and the reader who turns to this will see that if its ‘lighthouse policy’ was bad and illiberal, the utility of the corporation was manifested in many other ways; all through the reign of Charles I it was busy rendering efficient service to the Navy. The corporation dissuaded the king from building, merely for show, what was then a ‘big ship’—124 feet long, and 46 feet in breadth, and drawing 24 feet of water; no existing port could take such a ship, and no anchor or cable would hold her. The brethren might have preached from the lesson taught by the Armada; ours were the small craft that won in combat with the floating castles of Spain. ‘The wit and ingenuity of man,’ say the brethren, could not produce a seaworthy craft with three tiers of ordnance. If your majesty desires to serve the Navy, build two ships—the same money will do it!’ It is very curious to mark how Government got for nothing a great deal of valuable advice, and it is not very clear when the practical control of the dockyard at Deptford ceased to be in the Trinity House.

All this time the corporation charities were not forgotten. Besides enlarging the almshouses at Deptford, they were building others at Stepney, and organizing means for the relief of aged seamen, which was practically a scheme for insurance against old age and sickness.

Let us also, before we leave the subject of the Trinity House, say something further as to its history up to the time of the control of all lighthouses around the English coast being vested in it by Act of Parliament. In the angry days of the struggle between the King and Parliament, the board was loyal to the former, and paid its debt to the latter by being superseded in its authority by a committee. But with the restoration of Charles II came also a restoration of the ancient privileges of the Trinity House, which were watched over by General Monk as master. Other famous men presided over the corporation somewhat later; amongst them Samuel Pepys, in whose Diary are many allusions to his work there.

In the Restoration year the corporation moved from its former home to the more central one in which we now know it, near the Tower of London. Trinity Monday was that year kept in good style by a dinner for forty. But the corporation did not long enjoy the comforts of its new home; the flames of the fire of London licked round it, burnt the woodwork, and gutted it, destroying valuable pictures and also papers and parchments which would have drawn aside the veil that now shrouds the early history of the fraternity. It was not till August, 1670, that the house was built again; the rebuilding was no light matter, and in 1672 the corporation was £1,100 in debt, and some years elapsed ere that was wiped out. Meanwhile, every brother, elder or younger, seems to have behaved with a public spirit, foregoing any participation in the funds of the institution, leaving that for the poor and needy.

A little after this, whilst Pepys was master of the Trinity House, the suggestion was put forward of a compulsory purchase by the board of all existing lighthouses. We will not speculate as to the object the brethren had in desiring this acquisition; it is sufficient to state that its policy towards lighthouse schemes in general was not one which could have given the public much confidence; the time had not yet come for the scheme proposed.

But a little more than a century later the lighthouse policy of the Trinity House had entirely changed. The board no longer thwarted proposals for lighthouses and lightships in places needful; it was itself proposing them and helping, with its powerful hand, the sailor to fight for his rights in demanding that, for the dues he paid, the private owner should show a good and a steady light, and was furthering every project put forth by men of science for improving the power and intensity of lighthouse luminants.

The result was inevitable. Sailors, merchants, the people at large, began to look upon the corporation as every one looks upon it to-day—as a public-spirited institution, labouring its hardest in the interests of navigation. So it came about that in the year 1836 privately maintained lights were altogether extinguished, and the entire control of our lighthouse system handed over to the corporation that now directs it.