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Authors: Julian Stockwin
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Britain’s first great civil engineer, was the next to rise to the challenge of Eddystone. He took the English oak as his design inspiration – a broad base narrowing in a gentle curve. The 22-m high lighthouse was built using solid discs of stone dovetailed together. Work began in 1756, and from start to finish the work took three years, nine weeks and three days. Small boats transported nearly 1,000 tons of granite and Portland stone along with all the equipment and men.
The Smeaton lighthouse stood for over 100 years. In the end it was not the lighthouse that failed; rather that the sea was found to have eaten away the rock beneath the structure. In 1882 it was dismantled and brought back to Plymouth, where it was re-erected stone by stone on the Hoe as a memorial, and where it still stands. It had already been replaced by a new lighthouse, twice as tall and four and a half times as large, designed by James Douglas, which now gives mariners a beacon of light visible for 22 nautical miles.
Rudyerd’s Eddystone Lighthouse .
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THE COAST IS CLEAR – activity can proceed unhindered. DERIVATION : in the heyday of smuggling a boy led a white horse along a cliff as a signal, visible at night, that there were no Revenue men about and it was thus safe for smugglers to land contraband cargo brought over from France by sea.
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A VOYAGE THAT CHANGED HISTORY
In the early sixteenth century the Portuguese had a virtual monopoly on the only known sailing route to the Moluccas (part of modern-day Indonesia), eastwards around Africa. But if another way could be found to these fabled islands of spices, there would be great riches to be had.
On 10 August 1519 after nearly a year of preparation the Armada of Molucca, five small ships under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, left Spain on a daring quest to find a different route to the Spice Islands by going in the opposite direction, around South America. This would be through waters completely unknown to civilisation.
Almost three years to the day after they had departed, the armada returned with proof positive that the world could be circumnavigated by sea. But it was not Magellan who had achieved this incredible feat – he had not even contemplated it; his plan was to return from the Moluccas the same way he had come.
When the expedition stopped in the Philippines for food and water en route to the Spice Islands, Magellan became embroiled in a dispute with local tribes and met his death there at the hands of a local chieftain, Lapu Lapu. With the loss of Magellan there was in-fighting between the ships and a succession of commanders vied to take up the mantle. From the outset the expedition had been dogged by misfortune and in the end only one ship, Victoria , made it back to Spain. Out of the original 265 men who had set out in 1519 just 18 survived, half-dead from starvation and disease.
Although Magellan’s achievements are enormous – he crossed a fearfully unknown ocean, one far vaster than Columbus had sailed, and opened the way for future exploration of what in effect was half the planet – it was a man now almost forgotten by history, Juan Sebastian Elcano, who had brought Victoria safely back to Spain sailing westwards from the Moluccas, thereby becoming the first man to sail around the world.
Charles I of Spain feted Elcano and presented him with a pension and coat of arms with the inscription ‘ Primus Circumdedisti Me ’ – you were the first to encircle me.
Detail from a map by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius – Magellan’s ship Victoria.
N OT JUST A WORD-GRINDER
He has been called the father of modern nautical fiction, but Frederick Marryat had a number of strings to his bow including an adventurous career around the world as a naval officer, serving in the Mediterranean, the West Indies, the East Indies and North America.
In an age when swimming was not a widespread skill he saved the lives of more than a dozen sailors by diving into the
The Smeaton lighthouse stood for over 100 years. In the end it was not the lighthouse that failed; rather that the sea was found to have eaten away the rock beneath the structure. In 1882 it was dismantled and brought back to Plymouth, where it was re-erected stone by stone on the Hoe as a memorial, and where it still stands. It had already been replaced by a new lighthouse, twice as tall and four and a half times as large, designed by James Douglas, which now gives mariners a beacon of light visible for 22 nautical miles.
Rudyerd’s Eddystone Lighthouse .
----
THE COAST IS CLEAR – activity can proceed unhindered. DERIVATION : in the heyday of smuggling a boy led a white horse along a cliff as a signal, visible at night, that there were no Revenue men about and it was thus safe for smugglers to land contraband cargo brought over from France by sea.
----
A VOYAGE THAT CHANGED HISTORY
In the early sixteenth century the Portuguese had a virtual monopoly on the only known sailing route to the Moluccas (part of modern-day Indonesia), eastwards around Africa. But if another way could be found to these fabled islands of spices, there would be great riches to be had.
On 10 August 1519 after nearly a year of preparation the Armada of Molucca, five small ships under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, left Spain on a daring quest to find a different route to the Spice Islands by going in the opposite direction, around South America. This would be through waters completely unknown to civilisation.
Almost three years to the day after they had departed, the armada returned with proof positive that the world could be circumnavigated by sea. But it was not Magellan who had achieved this incredible feat – he had not even contemplated it; his plan was to return from the Moluccas the same way he had come.
When the expedition stopped in the Philippines for food and water en route to the Spice Islands, Magellan became embroiled in a dispute with local tribes and met his death there at the hands of a local chieftain, Lapu Lapu. With the loss of Magellan there was in-fighting between the ships and a succession of commanders vied to take up the mantle. From the outset the expedition had been dogged by misfortune and in the end only one ship, Victoria , made it back to Spain. Out of the original 265 men who had set out in 1519 just 18 survived, half-dead from starvation and disease.
Although Magellan’s achievements are enormous – he crossed a fearfully unknown ocean, one far vaster than Columbus had sailed, and opened the way for future exploration of what in effect was half the planet – it was a man now almost forgotten by history, Juan Sebastian Elcano, who had brought Victoria safely back to Spain sailing westwards from the Moluccas, thereby becoming the first man to sail around the world.
Charles I of Spain feted Elcano and presented him with a pension and coat of arms with the inscription ‘ Primus Circumdedisti Me ’ – you were the first to encircle me.
Detail from a map by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius – Magellan’s ship Victoria.
N OT JUST A WORD-GRINDER
He has been called the father of modern nautical fiction, but Frederick Marryat had a number of strings to his bow including an adventurous career around the world as a naval officer, serving in the Mediterranean, the West Indies, the East Indies and North America.
In an age when swimming was not a widespread skill he saved the lives of more than a dozen sailors by diving into the
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