Books: Records of a Family of Engineers

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson >> Records of a Family of Engineers

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[Tuesday, 30th Oct.]

On reaching the rock it was found that a very heavy sea still ran
upon it; but the writer having been disappointed on two former
occasions, and, as the erection of the house might now be
considered complete, there being nothing wanted externally,
excepting some of the storm-shutters for the defence of the
windows, he was the more anxious at this time to inspect it. Two
well-manned boats were therefore ordered to be in attendance; and,
after some difficulty, the wind being at N.N.E., they got safely
into the western creek, though not without encountering plentiful
sprays. It would have been impossible to have attempted a landing
to-day, under any other circumstances than with boats perfectly
adapted to the purpose, and with seamen who knew every ledge of the
rock, and even the length of the sea-weeds at each particular spot,
so as to dip their oars into the water accordingly, and thereby
prevent them from getting entangled. But what was of no less
consequence to the safety of the party, Captain Wilson, who always
steered the boat, had a perfect knowledge of the set of the
different waves, while the crew never shifted their eyes from
observing his motions, and the strictest silence was preserved by
every individual except himself.

On entering the house, the writer had the pleasure to find it in a
somewhat habitable condition, the lower apartments being closed in
with temporary windows, and fitted with proper storm-shutters. The
lowest apartment at the head of the staircase was occupied with
water, fuel, and provisions, put up in a temporary way until the
house could be furnished with proper utensils. The second, or
light-room store, was at present much encumbered with various tools
and apparatus for the use of the workmen. The kitchen immediately
over this had, as yet, been supplied only with a common ship's
caboose and plate-iron funnel, while the necessary cooking utensils
had been taken from the beacon. The bedroom was for the present
used as the joiners' workshop, and the strangers' room, immediately
under the light-room, was occupied by the artificers, the beds
being ranged in tiers, as was done in the barrack of the beacon.
The light-room, though unprovided with its machinery, being now
covered over with the cupola, glazed and painted, had a very
complete and cleanly appearance. The balcony was only as yet
fitted with a temporary rail, consisting of a few iron stanchions,
connected with ropes; and in this state it was necessary to leave
it during the winter.

Having gone over the whole of the low-water works on the rock, the
beacon, and lighthouse, and being satisfied that only the most
untoward accident in the landing of the machinery could prevent the
exhibition of the light in the course of the winter, Mr. John Reid,
formerly of the floating light, was now put in charge of the
lighthouse as principal keeper; Mr. James Slight had charge of the
operations of the artificers, while Mr. James Dove and the smiths,
having finished the frame of the light-room, left the rock for the
present. With these arrangements the writer bade adieu to the
works for the season. At eleven a.m. the tide was far advanced;
and there being now little or no shelter for the boats at the rock,
they had to be pulled through the breach of sea, which came on
board in great quantities, and it was with extreme difficulty that
they could be kept in the proper direction of the landing-creek.
On this occasion he may be permitted to look back with gratitude on
the many escapes made in the course of this arduous undertaking,
now brought so near to a successful conclusion.

[Monday, 5th Nov.]

On Monday, the 5th, the yacht again visited the rock, when Mr.
Slight and the artificers returned with her to the workyard, where
a number of things were still to prepare connected with the
temporary fitting up of the accommodation for the lightkeepers.
Mr. John Reid and Peter Fortune were now the only inmates of the
house. This was the smallest number of persons hitherto left in
the lighthouse. As four lightkeepers were to be the complement, it
was intended that three should always be at the rock. Its present
inmates, however, could hardly have been better selected for such a
situation; Mr. Reid being a person possessed of the strictest
notions of duty and habits of regularity from long service on board
of a man-of-war, while Mr. Fortune had one of the most happy and
contented dispositions imaginable.

[Tuesday, 13th Nov.]

From Saturday the 10th till Tuesday the 13th, the wind had been
from N.E. blowing a heavy gale; but to-day, the weather having
greatly moderated, Captain Taylor, who now commanded the Smeaton,
sailed at two o'clock a.m. for the Bell Rock. At five the floating
light was hailed and found to be all well. Being a fine moonlight
morning, the seamen were changed from the one ship to the other.
At eight, the Smeaton being off the rock, the boats were manned,
and taking a supply of water, fuel, and other necessaries, landed
at the western side, when Mr. Reid and Mr. Fortune were found in
good health and spirits.

Mr. Reid stated that during the late gales, particularly on Friday,
the 30th, the wind veering from S.E. to N.E., both he and Mr.
Fortune sensibly felt the house tremble when particular seas
struck, about the time of high-water; the former observing that it
was a tremor of that sort which rather tended to convince him that
everything about the building was sound, and reminded him of the
effect produced when a good log of timber is struck sharply with a
mallet; but, with every confidence in the stability of the
building, he nevertheless confessed that, in so forlorn a
situation, they were not insensible to those emotions which, he
emphatically observed, 'made a man look back upon his former life.'

[1881 Friday, 1st Feb.]

The day, long wished for, on which the mariner was to see a light
exhibited on the Bell Rock at length arrived. Captain Wilson, as
usual, hoisted the float's lanterns to the topmast on the evening
of the 1st of February; but the moment that the light appeared on
the rock, the crew, giving three cheers, lowered them, and finally
extinguished the lights.

Footnotes:

{2a} An error: Stevensons owned at this date the barony of
Dolphingston in Haddingtonshire, Montgrennan in Ayrshire, and
several other lesser places.

{3a} Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, at large.--[R. L. S.]

{4a} Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. i. pp. 56, 132, 186, 204,
368.- [R. L. S.]

{4b} Ibid. pp. 158, 299.--[R. L. S.]

{4c} Working farmer: Fr. laboureur.

{7a} This John Stevenson was not the only 'witness' of the name;
other Stevensons were actually killed during the persecutions, in
the Glen of Trool, on Pentland, etc.; and it is very possible that
the author's own ancestor was one of the mounted party embodied by
Muir of Caldwell, only a day too late for Pentland.

{7b} Wodrow Society's Select Biographies, vol. ii.- [R. L. S.]

{9a} Though the districts here named are those in which the name
of Stevenson is most common, it is in point of fact far more wide-
spread than the text indicates, and occurs from Dumfries and
Berwickshire to Aberdeen and Orkney.

{12a} Mr. J. H. Stevenson is satisfied that these speculations as
to a possible Norse, Highland, or French origin are vain. All we
know about the engineer family is that it was sprung from a stock
of Westland Whigs settled in the latter part of the seventeenth
century in the parish of Neilston, as mentioned at the beginning of
the next chapter. It may be noted that the Ayrshire parish of
Stevenston, the lands of which are said to have received the name
in the twelfth century, lies within thirteen miles south-west of
this place. The lands of Stevenson in Lanarkshire first mentioned
in the next century, in the Ragman Roll, lie within twenty miles
east.

{54a} This is only a probable hypothesis; I have tried to identify
my father's anecdote in my grandfather's diary, and may very well
have been deceived.--[R. L. S.]

{91a} This is, of course, the tradition commemorated by Southey in
his ballad of 'The Inchcape Bell.' Whether true or not, it points
to the fact that from the infancy of Scottish navigation, the
seafaring mind had been fully alive to the perils of this reef.
Repeated attempts had been made to mark the place with beacons, but
all efforts were unavailing (one such beacon having been carried
away within eight days of its erection) until Robert Stevenson
conceived and carried out the idea of the stone tower. But the
number of vessels actually lost upon the reef was as nothing to
those that were cast away in fruitless efforts to avoid it. Placed
right in the fairway of two navigations, and one of these the
entrance to the only harbour of refuge between the Downs and the
Moray Firth, it breathed abroad along the whole coast an atmosphere
of terror and perplexity; and no ship sailed that part of the North
Sea at night, but what the ears of those on board would be strained
to catch the roaring of the seas on the Bell Rock.

{92a} The particular event which concentrated Mr. Stevenson's
attention on the problem of the Bell Rock was the memorable gale of
December 1799, when, among many other vessels, H.M.S. York, a
seventy-four-gun ship, went down with all hands on board. Shortly
after this disaster Mr. Stevenson made a careful survey, and
prepared his models for a stone tower, the idea of which was at
first received with pretty general scepticism, Smeaton's Eddystone
tower could not be cited as affording a parallel, for there the
rock is not submerged even at high-water, while the problem of the
Bell Rock was to build a tower of masonry on a sunken reef far
distant from land, covered at every tide to a depth of twelve feet
or more, and having thirty-two fathoms' depth of water within a
mile of its eastern edge.

{94a} The grounds for the rejection of the Bill by the House of
Lords in 1802-3 had been that the extent of coast over which dues
were proposed to be levied would be too great. Before going to
Parliament again, the Board of Northern Lights, desiring to obtain
support and corroboration for Mr. Stevenson's views, consulted
first Telford, who was unable to give the matter his attention, and
then (on Stevenson's suggestion) Rennie, who concurred in affirming
the practicability of a stone tower, and supported the Bill when it
came again before Parliament in 1806. Rennie was afterwards
appointed by the Commissioners as advising engineer, whom Stevenson
might consult in cases of emergency. It seems certain that the
title of chief engineer had in this instance no more meaning than
the above. Rennie, in point of fact, proposed certain
modifications in Stevenson's plans, which the latter did not
accept; nevertheless Rennie continued to take a kindly interest in
the work, and the two engineers remained in friendly correspondence
during its progress. The official view taken by the Board as to
the quarter in which lay both the merit and the responsibility of
the work may be gathered from a minute of the Commissioners at
their first meeting held after Stevenson died; in which they record
their regret 'at the death of this zealous, faithful, and able
officer, TO WHOM IS DUE THE HONOUR OF CONCEIVING AND EXECUTING THE
BELL ROCK LIGHTHOUSE.' The matter is briefly summed up in the Life
of Robert Stevenson by his son David Stevenson (A. & C. Black,
1878), and fully discussed, on the basis of official facts and
figures, by the same writer in a letter to the Civil Engineers' and
Architects' Journal, 1862.

{122a} 'Nothing was said, but I was LOOKED OUT OF COUNTENANCE,' he
says in a letter.

{171a} Ill-formed--ugly.--[R. L. S.]

{174a} This is an incurable illusion of my grandfather's; he
always writes 'distended' for 'extended.'--[R. L. S.]

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