China’s First Purpose Designed and Built Lighthouse: Findings from the Analysis of a Long Lost but Recently Rediscovered Photograph of the Xiyu Pagoda Light

China’s First Purpose Designed and Built Lighthouse: Findings from the Analysis of a Long Lost but Recently Rediscovered Photograph of the Xiyu Pagoda Light

Although it has long been known that a purposely designed and built ‘pagoda’ lighthouse existed on the Penghu Islands’ Xiyu (Fisher’s) Island as of 1778, exactly what it looked like, how large it was and where it was placed vis-à-vis the 1875 Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs light that still exists has never been known. Existing Chinese data, from a contemporary stele the text of which was written by or for the then Taiwan Prefect, Jiang Yunshu, uses self-consistent traditional units of measure suggesting the seven level pagoda was of the order of 18m or more high. Other contemporary Chinese data speak of a powerful light that, rhetorically at least, could be seen from Taiwan in one direction and Xiamen in the other! Western reports, which we have from 1797 and more systematically as of Captain Richard Collinson’s survey of 1844, propose a tower only some 10m high and a very occasional light visible at best only one mile distant. There has been no way of reconciling these very different reports until the recent discovery in a major British archive of a photograph of the 1778 pagoda - as rebuilt after typhoon damage in 1823 - that can be dated to c.1875. In this paper this photograph will be presented and discussed and an attempt made, thanks to modern three dimensional modelling, to give accurate dimensions. Additional discussion will focus on features of the pagoda lighthouse revealed in the photograph that connect with hitherto ill-understood remains both in the present day lighthouse compound and in the Buddhist temple in the nearby village of Wai’an.

Stephen Davies

The Museum of Underwater Archaeology

2017

Stephen Davies