James Nicholas Douglass

Sir James Nicholas Douglass, (16 October 1826 – 19 June 1898) was an English civil engineer, a prolific lighthouse builder and designer, most famous for the design and construction of the fourth Eddystone Lighthouse, for which he was knighted. Biography James Nicholas Douglass was born in Bow, London, in 1826, the eldest son of Nicholas Douglass, also a civil engineer. After serving an apprenticeship with the Hunter and English company, he joined the engineering department of Trinity House, the United Kingdom's lighthouse authority. Along with his brother William, James worked as an assistant to his father during the construction of James Walker's Bishop Rock Lighthouse in the Scilly Isles, earning the nickname 'Cap'n Jim' during the process. After a brief period working for the Newcastle carriage builders R J & R Laycock, he returned in 1854 to assist in the lighthouse's final completion and to marry his fiancée Mary Tregarthen. Trinity House then engaged him as Resident Engineer to design the Smalls Lighthouse off the coast of Pembrokeshire, his first solo project. Douglass based his plans on the proven design of John Smeaton for the third Eddystone lighthouse, which had used dovetailed granite blocks for strength. Douglass sourced his granite from the De Lank Quarries near Bodmin, Cornwall, and had it shipped to Solva on the Welsh coast where it was dressed (cut and shaped). The Smalls light was completed in 1861, at a cost of £50,125, and in a record-breaking time of two years. Douglass immediately went on to supervise the construction of the Wolf Rock Lighthouse, designed by James Walker, and was appointed as Engineer-in-Chief of Trinity House in 1862.