It seemed rather apt last night to continue reading "A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World" in the darkened bedroom, which I did well into the early hours of the morning. I stopped short of watching the above movie which is based on an incident that occurred in 1801 at the Smalls Lighthouse.
Do you know what a luthier does? I didn't know either until I read the following: "On the shaking waters of Wales, there was once a lighthouse built with all the delicacy one would more usually employ for making a violin. Henry Whiteside, maker of musical instruments in Liverpool, placed a lamp supported on nine oak columns onto a rock, in such a way that the waves would pass through its structure to die 30 kilometres further on, when they touched the coast."
In 1777, when the works were nearly done, the luthier - have you figured out by now what a luthier does? - was himself caught at the lighthouse, trapped there by intense gales. With hardly any water and no supplies, and perhaps while playing on the melancholy strings of his violin, he threw three bottles into the sea with a desperate message: "Sir, being now in a most dangerous and distressed condition upon the Smalls, do hereby trust Providence will bring to your hand this, which prayeth for your immediate assistance to fetch us off the Smalls before the spring or we fear we shall all perish ..."
The isolation suffered by the Smalls lighthousekeepers was so extreme that twenty years later another misfortune occurred. One day in 1801, the distress signal was raised over the tower. But for four months, a protracted storm prevented any help. On the coast, the keepers' families were left in great anguish, and, night after night, they approached the Pembrokeshire cliffs to scan the horizon. The distress flag remained raised, but the light never failed to shine.
The only people at the lighthouse were the keepers Thomas Griffith and Thomas Howell, who were well known to argue. Griffith had died in unclear circumstances. And Howell, who had tried to help him, had a dilemma: if he tossed the body into the sea, he would likely be accused of murder. So he constructed an improvised coffin for his companion and placed it in a corner of the room. While waiting for the rescue boat, Howell shared the room with the deceased for several days, but when the stench of decomposition became unbearable, he tied the box up with some ropes and moved it outside. Lashed by the gales and beating constantly against the lighthouse, the wood of the coffin gave way. Griffith, like a contortionist, was left caught between the ropes with half his body outside the coffin. Howell closed his eyes but couldn't help witnessing the grim scene: the corpse's hand, swaying in the wind, seemed to be waving at him.
Finally, after some tortuous weeks, Howell was saved. His mental and physical state upon reaching the land was so pitiful that some of his relatives could not recognise him. It is said that Howell never went near another lighthouse again.
I will! Watch out for my next instalment on the subject of lighthouses!
P.S. The Smalls Lighthouse served as inspiration for another 2019 movie, also name "The Lighthouse", which is said to have been equally inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished story "The Light-house".
