At the distance of about twelve miles and a half from Plymouth Sound, and intercepting, as it were, the entrance of the Channel, the Eddystone rocks had been for ages a perpetual menace to the mariner. The number of vessels wrecked on these perfidious shoals must have been terrible indeed, it being even now a common thing in foggy weather for homeward-bound ships to make the Eddystone Lighthouse as the first point of land of Great Britain, so that in the night and nearly at high water, when the whole range of the rocks is covered, the most careful pilot might run his ship upon them, if nothing was placed there by way of warning. As the trade of England increased, the number of fatal accidents naturally augmented, rendering it more and more desirable to crest the Eddystone with a tutelary beacon; yet years elapsed before an architect appeared bold enough to undertake the task. At length, in 1696, Mr. Winstanley, a country gentleman and amateur engineer, made the first attempt of raising a lighthouse on those sea-beaten rocks, but as he was possessed of more enterprise than solid knowledge, the structure he erected was deficient in every element of stability. Yet such was the presumption of the man that he was known to express a wish that the fiercest storm that ever blew might arise to test the solidity of the fabric. The elements took him at his word, for while on a visit of inspection to his lighthouse the dreadful storm of November 26, 1703, arose, the only storm which in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane. "No other tempest," says Macaulay in his Essay on Addison, "was ever in this country the occasion of a Parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown down. One Prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees and the ruins of houses still attested in all the southern counties the fury of the blast." No wonder that a tempest like this swept away the ill-constructed lighthouse like the "unsubstantial fabric of a vision," and that neither poor Mr. Winstanley nor any of his companions survived to recount the terrors of that dreadful night.