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A 1830,s historians account of the Winstanley lighthouse. Plymouth.
Mr. Henry Winstanley, of Littlebury in Essex, after much danger and difficulty, succeeded in erecting a building of its kind on the Eddystone Rocks. This fabric however was so fantastically constructed that it bore no unapt resemblance to a Chinese Pagoda, and it was a common saying that “in hard weather it was very possible for a six-oared boat to be lifted on a billow and driven through the open gallery of the light-houses. The general opinion was that the structure would one day overset by the weight of the seas. In November, 1703, Mr Winstanley went out to the rocks, to superintend some repairs of the building, and that very night a fearful tempest arose which so increased the next day that the light-house, with its inmates, was swept into the bosom of the foaming deep. It had not been long destroyed before the Winchelsea, a Virginia-man laden with tobacco for Plymouth; went pieces on the Eddystone Rocks and all on board were lost.
