For those in peril on the sea

The story — or rather, stories — of how the British lighthouses were built has already withstood heavy and repeated telling. There’s Henry Winstanley’s first Eddystone light (brick, hexagonal, candles on the outside, en-suite state room) and his Icarus boast to the gods that it would withstand ‘the greatest storm that ever was’, which it didn’t. There’s Henry Hill, the keeper who swallowed a mouthful of molten lead while the second Eddystone burned. There’s John Smeaton’s tree of stone, flawless, tiny, eroded from below, now landbound on Plymouth Hoe.

And there are the old tales. From the early 1800s all lighthouses had three staff to ‘prevent suspicion of murder’ after one keeper on an English light died of natural causes and his deputy hung his body from the lantern-room balcony. When the relief boat finally arrived, the poor man was found to have kept the watches but lost his mind. Then there’s the Flannan Isles mystery (light extinguished, lodgings abandoned, all three keepers vanished), still (to some) unsolved.