Antique Eddystone Lighthouse Scrimshaw Sperm Whale Tooth on Wood Base. Polished. Likely an older juvenile tooth, due to the strong point but lessened curvature and signs of use. Depicts the famous third version of the lighthouse, before it was painted with red and white horizontal bands in 1858, with the title "Eddystone Light" carved beneath it all on one side. Anchored to the round wooden base from within the hollow core of the tooth. Unsigned. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: 4 x 4 x 7 in. 

The Eddystone Lighthouse is a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks south of Rame Head in Cornwall, England. The rocks are submerged below the surface of the sea at high tide and are composed of Precambrian gneiss. As the reef was very extensive and lay off one of the most important naval harbors in England, they became infamous by the 12th Century for claiming the lives of so many sailors. They were so feared by mariners entering the English Channel that boats often hugged the coast of France up into the 17th Century to avoid the danger, which resulted not only in shipwrecks locally, but on the rocks of the north coast of France and the Channel Islands, creating numerous international incidents. Given the difficulty of gaining a foothold on the rocks particularly in the predominant swell it was a long time before anyone attempted to place any warning on them whatsoever. The first lighthouse was an octagonal wooden structure built by Henry Winstanley. Not only was it the first recorded instance of an offshore lighthouse, but his remarkable determination and ingenuity meant it took only two years to build. Early on during construction a French privateer took Winstanley prisoner and destroyed the work done so far on the foundations, but when King Louis XIV found out his purpose for being there he had him released and gave him papers to show any future attacker, imbued with the words “France is at war with England, not with humanity.” The lighthouse survived its first winter but was in need of repair, and was subsequently changed to a dodecagonal stone clad exterior on a timber-framed construction with an octagonal top section. It lasted until the Great Storm of 1703, which erased almost all trace of it on December 8th. Winstanley was on the lighthouse at the time, completing additions to the structure, and he and the five men he had with him at the time were swept away and never found. The second version was built by John Rudyard, in a conical shape with significantly increased support and ballast, and completed in 1709. It stood for fifty years before it burned down, and the third structure, constructed by John Smeaton, is renowned because of its influence on lighthouse design and its importance in the development of concrete for building. It was completed in 1759 and underwent numerous important modifications over the next century. Its upper portions were re-erected in Plymouth as a monument after James Douglass designed and built the fourth structure on the spot in 1882, which is still in use to this day. It was the first lighthouse to become fully automated in 1982, and converted to include a helipad above the lantern to allow maintenance crews access. Around the world it is still recognized as one of the most important lighthouses in modern history, due to the many challenges overcome over the years in making them that led to improved methods all over the globe at other lighthouses.

Commensurate with age.