Keeper of the Eddystone Light, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer's father, the keeper of the Eddystone Light, had three children by a mermaid. Now he is gone (deserted? eaten by cannibals?). The boy meets his mother, who asks of her children; they live the troubled lives of half-humans
AUTHOR: J. London (source: 1866 sheet music)
EARLIEST DATE: 1866 (sheet music; said to have been performed by Arthur Lloyd)
KEYWORDS: humorous father mother mermaid/man animal reunion
FOUND IN: US(SW)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Bronner/Eskin-FolksongAlivePart1 7, "Keeper of the Eddystone Light" (1 text, 1 tune)
Grigson-PenguinBookOfBallads 120, "The Keeper of the Eddystone Light" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 27, "Eddystone Light" (1 text)
DT, EDDYSTON* EDDYNORE* (ASTERLT*)
ADDITIONAL: Mike Palmer, _Eddystone: The Finger of Light_, 1998 (I use the 2205 Seafarer Books edition), p. 129, "The Eddystone Light" (1 text, of a very modern version)
Roud #22257
RECORDINGS:
Sue Armstrong, "The Eddystone Light" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #681, recorded 09/19/2023)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Caviar Comes from Virgin Sturgeon" (theme)
NOTES [3180 words]: For many years, Trinity House was responsible for navigation aids around England (Palmer, pp. 2-4), but for a long time, there wasn't a lot they could really do except supply pilot books and the like. Eventually they started creating actual beacons.
There had been a few small lighthouses built on the English coast by the 1690s (Nancollas, p. 19), but there had never been an attempt to build one on a rock or a point at sea. Indeed, there were no rock lighthouses anywhere in northwest Europe (Nancollas, p. 18).
Eddystone, according to Nancollas, p. 18, is a dangerous reef ("twenty-three rust-red rocks") about nine and a half miles off the coast of Devon. They are thirteen to fourteen miles south-southwest of Plymouth -- then and now, one of the biggest ports on England's south coast; with the establishment of the British Naval Dockyard at Plymouth in the 1690s, the Eddystone rocks were a major safety problem, and navigation aids became even more important. (It occurs to me that the Eddystone reef could well have been a residence for the sort of mermaid who deliberately lured sailors to their doom: Low, wet, and unreachable by land, so good mermaid habitat, and incredibly deadly. Maybe the mermaid of the song was already resident when the Eddystone lighthouse was built -- perhaps even trying to subvert his work.)
The name "Eddystone" was apparently appropriate; the chart on p. xi of Palmer shows that there were in fact eddies among the rocks of the reef. Nor could a ship guard itself by taking soundings; in most directions from the rocks, the water depth was a fairly steady 10 fathoms or so until one was within about a tenth of a mile of the rocks -- too close to safely stop.
The Eddystone rocks were also a horrible place to build anything: small and low, workmen could not set up a camp or sleep on the rocks, and could not stay there at all in bad weather; they had to go home at night, and work when conditions permitted.
The extant Eddystone Lights are famous for representing a revolutionary design. The second was the first lighthouse designed as a smooth cylinder -- important because it would help the lighthouse survive heavy seas and storms. Most later lighthouses, of course, have followed this design.
The tower and stump that are currently on the rocks weren't the first try at an Eddystone Light, though. here were in fact four different Eddystone Lighthouses, according to Uden/Cooper, pp. 136-137:
- The first, begun by Winstanley in 1696 and first lighted in 1698 (Nancollas, p. 20); by 1699 it had been raised to 100 feet high. It was very fancy, but it wasn't really very strong; it was destroyed in 1703. The first and second phases of this are sometimes considered different lighthouses.
- The second was built by John Rudyerd in 1709 and lasted until 1755, when it was destroyed by fire from its own lanterns.
- The third was the first one made entirely of stone; it was designed by John Smeaton and begun in 1797. It stood for 120 years, although it went out of use before that, and the base of it still stands near the fourth lighthouse.
- The fourth lighthouse, which still stands, was built by James Douglass starting in 1878; the light is 135 feet above the average water level, and went into service in 1882.
If you go to Google Maps and search for "Eddystone Lighthouse," there are dozens of photos of lighthouse #4 and the base of #3, plus a few scans of images of #1. No one seems to care about #2.
The idea of building an Eddystone Light was first raised in the early 1690s. An attempt was made to hire a fellow named William Whitfield to build a lighthouse early in that decade; but Trinity House would not offer enough in the way of fees, and negotiations broke down (Nancollas, p. 19; this is vastly oversimplified, based on Palmer, but the bottom line is, it didn't happen). It was not until a showman named Henry Winstanley offered to take on the task that construction got underway.
Astoundingly, it seems Winstanley took the job before he had even been out in a boat to look at the Eddystone rocks (Palmer, pp. 11-12), which makes me wonder why anyone took him seriously.
Perhaps they shouldn't have. Winstanley was more a builder of spectacles than a true architect (Nancollas, p. 20) -- e.g. his home was also a sort of fun house museum of odd gadgets such as chairs that would trap you or catapult you somewhere (Palmer, p. 10). The lighthouse was an extremely elaborate construction -- Palmer has drawings of it on pp. 15-19 as well as on his cover. It had many jagged edges and outcroppings; frankly, it looks like a tourist attraction! After it survived its first winter in 1698, Winstanley patched it up, made it taller, and strengthened it. But not enough. A gale -- the "Great Storm of 1703," thought by many to be the strongest storm to have hit England to that time -- destroyed it (and killed Winstanley and his crew as they tried to reach it and save it) in 1703 (Nancollas, p. 21). No sign of Winstanley and his men was ever found, and the lighthouse was so thoroughly destroyed that only a few pieces of debris could even be identified as part of it (Palmer, p. 22). Nonetheless he was remembered; the poet Jean Ingelow, responsible for "Seven Times One (The Song of Seven)," wrote a tribute to him many centuries later.
The effects of the lighthouse's ruin were felt immediately; the very day after the light went down, the Winchelsea was lost on the rocks (Palmer, p. 26)
In 1706, Trinity House tried again, giving a 99-year lease to Captain John Lovet(t), who hired John Rudyerd/Rudyard to design the light (Nancollas, p. 22). Rudyerd designed a smooth circular base of stone -- the key aspect of the Eddystone design: don't give the sea something to attack! Stone was used for part of the height, covered with wood, but toward the top, it was basically a wood structure, which meant that naval construction methods could be used (Palmer, p. 32; p. 36 shows a cutaway diagram). It was placed in service in 1708 (Palmer, p. 37), though there were lots of problems with ownership over the next few years (Palmer, pp. 41-47).
Initially there were two keepers serving at the lighthouse at any given time; this was later raised to three. Pay, in the 1720s, was £25 per year (Palmer. p. 51). An ongoing problem was that it was often impossible to supply the lighthouse because of wind and wave; one keeper actually died there, and no one knew for weeks, or was able to bring home the body, because no supply ship could get to the light (Palmer, pp. 50-53).
The use of wood made the structure somewhat flexible, which helped it withstand the wind and wave. But it meant that the wood had to be constantly maintained and replaced (Nancollas, p. 23; according to Palmer, p. 51, there was a sort of worm that continually attacked the structure, and on one occasion, almost half the wood near the bottom was torn off; Palmer, p. 53). And... it meant that the lighthouse was flammable. Given that it was at sea, this perhaps didn't seem like a major issue, but on December 2, 1755, after giving almost half a century of service, it caught fire and burned.
(This gave rise to another tragedy: an aged lighthouse-keeper, a man named Hall, was looking up when a lump of melted lead hit him in the face and went down his throat. He died of it, though apparently he lived long enough to tell the tale -- and the lead blob has been preserved to prove it. Nancollas, pp. 23-24.)
John Smeaton, the designer of lighthouse #3, was a very different type from his predecessors, a man whose very life was devoted to civil engineering and gadgetry (Nancollas, p. 24). Even as a boy, he had been designing gadgets and scientific instruments; his inventions were so clever that they won him the Royal Society's Gold Medal (Palmer, p. 66). He also turned out to be a good boss, working out careful contracts with his employees and treating them well (Palmer, pp. 68-70).
Everyone local thought he needed to built the new Eddystone of wood, as Rudyerd had done. Smeaton disagreed (Palmer, pp. 66-67). His design was, I would say, sheer genius -- stone, but not standard rectangular blocks such as everyone else used. Rather, he would cut the stone in interlocking hourglass shapes (Palmer, p. 99, has a photos of some of the surviving examples at the foot of Smeaton's tower). It had no outcroppings, and the whole thing had a gradual taper, which he compared to tree trunks (Nancollas, pp. 25-26; Palmer, p. 68). This made it extremely mechanically solid; there were no rough edges for the wind or waves to grab, and because of the interlocking structure, nothing that could be battered in unless the wave hit with enough force to crush the entire wall. It was simple but brilliant, and deserved all the notoriety it garnered. Smeaton also had the idea of setting up an accommodation ship anchored near the site so that the men wouldn't have to make trips to and from land every day -- trips which often took five hours each way. He also set up two teams of workmen so that one could work ashore while the other was at work on the rock (Palmer, p. 71).
He and his men carved the gneiss of one of the Eddystone rocks enough that they could start laying their granite blocks -- first partial circles, then, starting at the sixth layer, full circles, with stones all the way to the center, making a completely solid base. Marble dowels made sure that each layer was firmly fixed to that above and below it.
Once they reached the fifteenth course, they left the interior hollow, to allow an entrance and narrow upward stair. Eventually they reached the small inhabited area of the lighthouse, with the light above that (Nancollas, p. 27). Smeaton himself set the finial at the top of the tower, and it was first lit on October 16, 1759 (Nancollas, p. 27).
So accurate had been his engineering that, when he measured the tower's angle from the vertical upon completion of the courses of the tower proper, the deviation was just one-eighth of an inch over a fall of 49 and a half feet (Palmer, p. 83) -- in other words, one part in 4752!
"Smeaton's tower was the most influential and all other rock lighthouses surviving today follow his essential principles. Against the wild contours of the reef had been placed a new type of building, made of precisely carved, interlocking stones, stamping order on disorder, laying a pioneering set of foundations" (Nancollas, p. 27).
No wonder that, even a century later, the Eddystone was still *the* lighthouse to talk about.
I haven't found a list of all the Eddystone keepers (I suspect that not all of them are known), but the first three were Henry Carter, Henry Edwards, and John Hatherley (Palmer, p. 91).
The fact that Smeaton's tower stood for many decades does not mean that it went unmodified. The early candle lights could be seen, at best, for about five miles. By 1807, they were superseded. Gradually, new kinds of lights, reflectors, even Fresnel lenses were installed (Palmer, pp. 93-95). But they were all installed in the same cage atop the lighthouse.
This period also saw the light adopt its final color scheme of alternating red and white stripes (Palmer, p. 95); it had had paint schemes before that, but none had "stuck."
Given the date of its appearance, it would appear this song refers to the third lighthouse, but we should perhaps continue the story. Smeaton's lighthouse held up well for three-quarters of a century or so, but at the end of that time, it was noticed that it seemed to shake more in wind and storm than it used to. It wasn't that the tower was unsound -- the rock it rested on was crumbling; inspectors found it wearing away, and the tower starting to be undermined (Palmer, p. 97). Clearly it could not stand forever (Nancollas, p. 155). This led to an interesting disagreement: All agreed that a new lighthouse was needed, but the locals wanted to preserve the old one, while Trinity House just wanted to knock it down and get it out of the way. The eventual compromise was that the locals raised money to take down the old lighthouse and rebuild it on land. They took down roughly the top two-thirds (the part that people could enter) and rebuilt on Plymouth Hoe (Nancollas, p. 156; Palmer, p. 97, who on p. 98 adds that it is close enough to the coast that it still can be used as a navigational landmark on clear days, though it is no longer lit. Palmer has a photo on p. 142). The stump of the tower remains on the reef, still quite solid and visible to those who come close. The new Eddystone, designed by James Douglass and put in service in 1882 (Nancollas, pp. 159-160), is on the rock nearby (whether it's the same rock or different to some extent depends on the tide).
James Douglass's father Nicholas worked as an engineer for Trinity House (Palmer, p. 101), and his brother also was a lighthouse engineer (indeed, the whole family had worked to build, although they had not designed, the Bishop Rock lighthouse; Palmer, pp. 102-103), so one might say that lighthouse design was in James's blood. He had already been Resident Engineer responsible for building the Smalls lighthouse in Wales and the Wolf Rock lighthouse (Palmer, p. 103).
Building the lighthouse was easier because of new technology -- they were able to smooth the gneiss with compressed-air drills and sulfuric acid and build a cofferdam around the new site and use pumps to keep it dry, which let them build more easily and set the base closer to the water surface (Palmer, pp. 105-106) -- there would be no undercutting this lighthouse! They also had access to steam power from their auxiliary boats for their equipment (Palmer, p. 108), which made it much easier, e.g., to lift the stones (which weight 5000-6500 pounds) used for the lighthouse.
The design was clever in several ways. The bottom 25 and a half feet of the tower were solid stone, but there was a double taper above that, so that the outside of the tower narrowed while the inner hollow got slightly wider toward the top. This meant that the lower walls were 8 feet six inches thick, but the upper walls "just" two feet three inches (Palmer, p. 113). This gave additional structural strength throughout. The tower's interior contained a large fresh water tank and, above it, nine rooms, one above the other, each 14 feed in diameter (Palmer, p. 114). The bottom six were functional rooms -- the tower entrance, store room, coal room, store room, crane room, oil room. Above these were the "living room"/kitchen and "bed room," plus, just below the light, the "service room" (Palmer, p. 115; I can't help but note that this left three men trying to get along in a living space totaling about 300 square feet, or about a third the size of the smallest American homes). Supplies were generally brought up by winch rather than carried by hand. Sometimes even the staff went up and down by winch (Palmer, p. 114).
It was a much bigger structure than Smeaton's, finished in 1881, with the formal lighting ceremony on May 18, 1882 (Palmer, p. 112, though he says on p. 120 that Smeaton's beacon was turned off on February 3). It was, note, a rotating beacon, with a system of weights to help the light-keeper, but as initially set up, the keeper still had to turn a winch all night to keep it going (Palmer, p. 118).
Douglas even managed to finish it under-budget -- it cost less than £60,000, and his estimate had been £78,000. It was also done without anyone being killed or seriously injured (Palmer, p. 119). No wonder that, in an absurd irony, they hired him to take down Smeaton's old tower and rebuild it on land!
The new lighthouse had more modern technology than Smeaton's -- e.g. it used lenses to focus its light, and a modern foghorn -- but at a distance it looked much the same in form, at least as originally built, though it was much larger. The base is 44 feet in diameter, with the light 133 feet above high water (Palmer, p. 108). (It has of course experienced modernization, and at least one of those modernizations, in which a helipad was built on the top in 1980 -- Palmer, p. 125 -- really spoiled its looks as far as I'm concerned.) It still stands today, even though GPS navigation is causing lighthouses to be taken out of service. And there is no longer a Keeper; Eddystone was converted to automatic operation as early as 1982, making it the first rock lighthouse to lose its on-site staff (Nancollas, p. 165; Palmer, p. 125).
The song seems to have had a curious history. The earliest version I know apart from the sheet music is in a Harvard songbook from 1889, and it closely resembles "The Man at the Nore" as learned by Cyril Tawney from fellow sailors (the chorus runs "A jolly story lightly told, How the winds they blew and the waves they rolled, Down at the bottom of the deep blue sea You'll find the proof of my veracity." This fits the "Man at the Nore" tune but cannot be sung to the "Yo Ho Ho" melody that is more often printed today. The verses also match "The Man at the Nore").
[Credit to Malcolm Douglas and John Patrick for digging up the sheet music and Harvard songster.]
But "The Man at the Nore" is now very rare, despite an excellent tune. Most people know the "Yo ho ho!" version, perhaps because it was popularized by Burl Ives. This version is among the most-parodied songs of all time. I know of "The Keeper of the London Zoo," "The Keeper of the Asteroid Light," and I've heard hints of others.
Is it possible that one of the two basic versions is a deliberate rewrite of the other? Collections in tradition are few (apart from Tawney's), making it a bit unlikely that such drastic changes came about due simply to oral transmission.
Richard Dyer-Bennet has been credited with creating the final verse of the common version ("The phosphorus flashed in her seaweed hair..." -- bad science, incidentally, since there is almost no free phosphorus in the ocean; it's a necessary chemical for life, but not very common; every atom finds a home in some creature's DNA. Many ocean creatures are, of course, phosphorescent -- but not due to phosphorus).
Despite its rarity in tradition, this song seems to have inspired a handful of fictional books, including Amelia Smith, Eddystone Light, Split Rock Books, 2014; at least one illustrated edition of the song; and Michael Rough's 1823 (?) poem "The Eddystone Lighthouse."
More serious books about the building of the various lighthouses include Palmer (cited here) ;Adam Hart-Davis, Henry Winstanley and the Eddystone Light, The History Press, 2002; Fred Majdalany, The Eddystone Light or The Red Rocks of Eddystone: The Story of the Eddystone Lighthouse, 1959 (American Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1960); Emma Marshall, The First Light on the Eddystone, Seeley and Co., 1894; R. M. Ballantyne, The Story of the Rock: The Eddystone Lighthouse (I don't know who first published this, but it's old enough that there are several scan-and-print-on-demand editions); there is also Me Father Was the Keeper: John Smeaton and the Eddystone Light, which doesn't seem to list an author. - RBW
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