The improved lighting at the Eddystone came into operation on the Trinity House acquiring possession of the lighthouse on the expiry of the lease—that would be about the year 1807. Very soon afterwards it was discovered that the rock on which the building stood was becoming undermined by the action of the tide. Robert Stevenson was consulted in 1813, and for the next sixty years the records of the Trinity House show that repairs to the lighthouse of some kind or other were being carried on almost continuously. But this stopping cracks, underpinning, and shoreing up could not go on indefinitely; and in 1877 the board resolved to instruct Sir James Douglas, its late engineer-in-chief, to build a new Eddystone lighthouse on a neighbouring rock which offered a perfectly solid foundation—the improved diving appliances of modern days of course rendered possible a much more complete submarine examination of the spot selected. It is worthy of note that, whilst engaged in their explorations, the divers found a number of relics of the first lighthouse, including the weights of the large standard clock that had given Winstanley and his keepers the time, and which the waves had swallowed up a hundred and seventy years before, when the unstable and fantastic tower was blown into the sea. The present Eddystone lighthouse differs in many important respects from Smeaton’s; instead of the tower being a curved shaft from its foundation, Sir James Douglas has designed his building with a cylindrical base, which not only prevents the waves from breaking against the tower itself, but provides a convenient landing-stage and exercise ground all round the lighthouse, a boon which a recent visitor to the lighthouse tells us is greatly appreciated by the keepers.