Dramatic Moments.

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 109, 1 February 1935, Page 9

Dramatic Moments.

DEATH IN THE STORM Probably the greatest storm that ever swept over the British Isles was one that lasted a week in November, 1703. In it died a man with a merry heart. He was Henry Winstanley, born in 1644. In an age when little was known about science, and when mechanical appliances were clumsy and imperfect, this fearless man with a touch of genius and something of the child in him, decided to build a lighthouse on the Eddystone rock. It was a mad and a glorious idea.. For four years he and his gallant little group of men worked on that small rock over which immense seas thundered, a point so overwhelmed by the waves that for a fortnight not a sign of the rock could be seen. They fitted stones together in an ingenious way. They erected something not unlike our modern arrangement of iron girders in huge buildings. They made a concrete base, and then added a wooden upper structure. It was a gay pile in an angry sea. But it served its purpose for four winters. Then, an hour or two before the great storm broke. Winstanley—who loved his lighthouse more than anything else—-was rowed out to his queer castle. The gale screamed round his frail structure which he thought so strong. The seas, churned to unprecedented fury, roared round it and over it. Winstanley looked out of his window and saw the battle of the elements. Folk on shore saw his lighthouse —a thing, grey finger between the sea and the lurid sunset. After the first night of the storm they looked out to sea agtiin. The spray was flying high over the Eddystone rock, but Winstanley and his lighthouse had gone for ever.