Smeaton, the engineer, often evinced a high feeling of independence in respect to pecuniary matters, and would never allow motives of emolument to interfere with plans laid on other considerations. The Empress Catherine of Russia was exceedingly anxious to have his services in the formation of great engineering works in her dominions, and she commissioned the Princess Dackshaw to offer him his own terms, if he would accede to her proposal. But his plans and his heart were bent upon the exercise of his skill in his own country, and he steadily refused all the offers made to him. It is reported that when the Princess found her attempts unavailing, she said to him, "Sir, you are a great man, and I honour you. You may have an equal in abilities, perhaps, but in character you stand single. The English minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was mistaken; and my sovereign, to her loss, finds one who has not his price."

After Smeaton had retired from his profession, he was often pressed to superintend certain works; when these entreaties were backed by personal offers of emolument, he used to send for an old woman who took care of his chambers in Gray's Inn, and say, "Her attendance suffices for all my wants!" a reply which conveyed the intimation that a man whose personal wants were so simple, was not likely to break through a pre-arranged line of conduct for mere pecuniary considerations.

Smeaton's magnum opus is the Eddystone lighthouse, which has withstood the storms of more than a century. One of its severest perils was in a terrific hurricane in November, 1824, when the men in the lighthouse appear to have been in a most critical situation; alive to their danger, and conscious of being beyond the hope of human aid. The report made by one of the light-keepers states, that on the morning of the 23rd, "the sea was tremendous, and broke with such violence on the top and round the building, as to demolish in an instant five panes of the lantern glass, and sixteen cylinder glasses, the former of unusual thickness. The house shook with so much violence as to occasion considerable motion of the cylinder glasses fixed in the lamps; and at times the whole building appeared to sway as if resting on an elastic body. The water came from the top of the edifice in such quantities that we were overwhelmed, and the sea made a breach from the top of the house to the bottom."