Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1877 — Lighthouses and Waves. [ARTICLE]

Lighthouses and Waves.

The force of the waves and the height to which they dash against lighthouse towers In the most exposed situations are astonishing; and we cannot contemplate them without reflecting how great a triumph of science and art these buildings are, and how strange life in them most be. We find some interesting information on these points in the copious appendix to the report of the Royal Commission appointed in 1858 to inquire into the condition and management of lights, buoys and beacons—a bulky parliamentary blue book of 1861. At the Longships lighthouse, on the top of a conical rock opposite Land’s End, the Commissioners were told by the head keeper that in heavy weather waves break above the lantern, seventy-nine feet above high-water mark; and that on one occasion the sea lifted the cowl off tiie top eo as to admit a great deal of water, by which several of tue lamps were extinguished, and ail the men were employed in bailing til! the tide fell. He added that there is a cavern under the lighthouse at the end of a long slip in the roex, and when there is a heavy sea the noise produced by the escape of pent-up air from the cavern is so great that the men can hardly Bleep. Concerning the Bcilly Bishops’ lighthouse, on a rock in the southwest cf the Sciliy Isles, of which the Commissioners say that the building is “ perhaps the most exposed in the world,” they give the report of the head keeper that “ the spray goes over the top of the lighthouse,” ike height of which is 110 feet. At the South Bishop Rock lighthouse they were informed that “ spray occasionally strikes the lantern, and it has broken the lower windows of the dwelling-house”— that is, of the part of the tower so-called. Yet the South Bishop Rock lighthouse is on a rock—off the coast of South Wales—of such size that there is a patch of grass before the door, and the tower rises to a height of 144 feet above the sea. The smalls lighthouse, also off the coast of South Wales, is on a low rock about twenty miles from land, but so large that there “ is room to walk about.” It Is above high-water mark, but, we are told, “the sea breaks all about the lantern o's tbe old lighthouse, and over the new building when there is heavy weather.” The “old building” was a wooden lighthouse, erected in 1788; the “new building," a stone one in coarse of erection in 1859, when the visit of the Commissioners was paid. The Commissioners add, from fntormatiun given to them by the head peeper, that “green sea% pass up to a point about thirty-two feet above the level of the rock.” If this is the case in the Irish Sea, what most be

the height to which “green sens” ranch on the lighthouse towers in fee Atlantic Ocean! As to the force of the wave*, although no stone had been removed from Its place since the work of the new building began, an iron bar was shown to the Commissioners about two inches thick, ani fixed In the rock, which bad been bent like a wire.-*- Knglith Paper.