Henry Winstanley Never For Lacked For ...

Henry Winstanley never for lacked for confidence. Becoming a man as England was becoming the mercantile juggernaut in the late 1600s, Henry Winstanley was a man who knew how to make a name for himself. He made his money as a showman, and then invested it in ships. A proud man, he knew that confidence was key to success. He knew what it meant to bet it all on a good hunch.

But shipping and showmanship could both be a dangerous game. First he lost one ship, and then a second on the Eddystone Reef. Fourteen miles off Cornwall, in the middle of the western end of the English Channel, the Eddystone rocks were a hazard to all ships too foolhardy or too unaware to steer clear. But Henry knew what he needed to do. He was going to build a lighthouse – a beacon to all who would pass, warning them not to come to close, for upon these rocks lay destruction: Just a few feet above the surface, and yet enough to send the mightiest ship to a watery grave.

This lighthouse would not be an easy task. Fourteen miles out in the ocean, workers spent four months digging just twelve holes. In the second year out on the rocks, the French navy – at war with England took Winstanley and his men prisoner. Only a confident audience before the enemy king bought back his freedom.

Three years and most of his fortune in, the lighthouse was finally complete. Perched amongst the rocks, the eighty foot tower was a marvel to behold. Standing proud against the waves, it was Winstanley’s monument to his own vision. Lives were saved because Henry knew what it meant to believe in himself. He never lost faith in his ability to build that tower. He never lost faith in his vision to save ships, to save lives.

But manning this beacon proved to be a difficult task. Out in the middle of the ocean, the tower would move and creek. Eighty foot waves had been known to crest as high as the balustrade just beneath the light. Lesser men less cocky than he were afraid to stand against the sea in Henry’s beacon.

Seeking to find a man who believed in his own engineering, Winstanley proudly published his wish that he “could be in that lighthouse in the midst of the greatest storm that ever was.” And, on November 26, 1703, he got his wish. A great nor’easter – a North Atlantic hurricane – reached the Eddystone Rocks. When the storm had blown past, nearly 8000 people perished. The first among them was Henry Winstanley. Henry’s monument had been laid low by the Great Storm. With just one wave, eighty feet of iron, wood and masonry, were knocked off their precarious perch on the Eddystone reef. Henry and the poor, drunken light keeper he had managed to convince with his bravado were never seen again.

Proverbs says that pride goes before a fall. That pride had built that lighthouse against all odds, but that same pride blinded Winstanley to full fury of the forces that nature fomented against him. Only 59 years old, his pride was his destruction.