A quote from Bermuda’s Story by Terry Tucker:

“For a long time it had been very plain that there would continue to be many shipwrecks around our coasts unless a lighthouse were built, and this, also, was undertaken during Reid’s term of office. The light was first displayed from Gibb’s Hill on the night of May 1st of his last year, 1846. Many of the people in that neighborhood had cheerfully discarded their candles and their whale-oil lamps in the firm belief that the new cast-iron lighthouse would supply them with all the light they needed! How ruefully they must have rescued and relit their old lamps when they found that the revolving flash that shone for thirty miles out to sea was hardly a substitute for a steady light in their houses.

The engineer who arrived from England to build the lighthouse was the celebrated George Grove. He remained long enough to design Trinity Church (on whose site the Cathedral now stands) and also the newer church in Devonshire Parish. Like many men of genius, his interests covered a wide range of subjects: his Dictionary of Musical Biography is still a standard work and stands on all library shelves.”