Fate gratified his wish, for while he was on the rock in the year 1703 one of the most terrible tempests that ever have assailed the coasts of Britain gripped the structure, tore it up by the roots, and hurled it into the Channel, where it was battered to pieces, its designer and five keepers going down with the wreck. When the inhabitants of Plymouth, having vainly scanned the horizon for a sign of the tower on the following morning, put off to the rock to investigate, they found only the bent and twisted iron rods by which the tower had been held in position projecting mournfully into the air from the rock-face. Shortly after the demolition of the tower, the reef, as if enraged at having been denied a number of victims owing to the existence of the warning light, trapped the _Winchelsea_ as she was swinging up Channel, and smashed her to atoms, with enormous loss of life. Although the first attempt to conquer the Eddystone had terminated so disastrously, it was not long before another effort was made to mark the reef. The builder this time was a Cornish labourer’s son, John Rudyerd, who had established himself in business on Ludgate Hill as a silk-mercer. In his youth he had studied civil engineering, but his friends had small opinion of his abilities in this craft. However, he attacked the problem boldly, and, although his tower was a plain, business-looking structure, it would have been impossible to conceive a design capable of meeting the peculiar requirements of the situation more efficiently. It was a cone, wrought in timber, built upon a stone and wood foundation anchored to the rock, and of great weight and strength. The top of the cone was cut off to permit the lantern to be set in position. The result was that externally the tower resembled the trunk of an oak-tree, and appeared to be just about as strong. It offered the minimum of resistance to the waves, which, tumbling upon the ledge, rose and curled around the tapering form without starting a timber. Rudyerd, indeed, may be considered to be the father of the science of modern lighthouse designing, because the lines that he evolved have never been superseded for exposed positions even in these days of advanced engineering science, greater constructional facilities, and improved materials. Rudyerd’s ingenuity and skill received a triumphant vindication when the American engineers set out to build the Minot’s Ledge and Spectacle Reef lighthouses, inasmuch as these men followed slavishly in the lines he laid down, and their achievements are numbered among the great lighthouses of the world to-day.