CHAPTER VII.OPERATIONS OF 1841.
Hynish workyard.The workyard at Hynish presented a very busy scene during the summer and winter of 1840; and the desolation and misery of the surrounding hamlets of Tyree seemed to enhance the satisfaction of looking on our small colony, where about 150 souls were collected in a neat quadrangle of cleanly houses, conspicuous by their chimnies and windows amongst the hovels of the poor Hebrideans, who generally make no outlet for the smoke in their gloomy dwellings, but permit it to escape by the doors. The regular meals and comfortable lodgings and the cleanly and energetic habits of the Lowland workmen, whose days were spent in toil and their evenings, most generally, in the sober recreations of reading and singing, formed a cheering contrast to the listless, dispirited, and squalid look of the poor Celts, who have none of the comforts of civilized life and are equally ignorant of the value of time and the pleasures of activity.
The number of masons employed in 1841, varied from 60 to 84 and they were chiefly engaged in dressing blocks for the Lighthouse-Tower, in discharging the cargoes of vessels loaded with stone from Mull and also in shipping stones for the Rock, in which operation, their acquaintance with the handling of dressed materials and their readiness in working the cranes, made them very useful in directing and also in working along with the native labourers, who, partly from incapacity and partly from excessive indolence, could not be trusted for a moment to themselves. Duringthat year, upwards of 38,000 cubic feet of granite were dressed into blocks with straight beds and joints, and with faces of double curvature, so as to suit the contour of the Tower, when arranged in the wall. The blocks were also fitted with stone joggles, for retaining them in their places, and with lewis-holes for raising them in the manner usually practised in building materials of that description. Of those materials upwards of 70 blocks were floor-stones (see Plans of 84th and 85th courses,Plate VIII.),dovetailedon the heads,checkedon the joints and having a plain surface on the upper and a concave one on the under bed. The necessity of preserving throughout their entire joints a perfect uniformity of bearing, made the dressing of those materials a work of great nicety; and each stone, as before noticed, being cut according to moulds, was fitted temporarily in its place on the platform at Hynish, previously to its being laid aside as ready for transport to the Rock. Those various operations were conducted with great care; and the stones, which were regularly arranged and numbered according to a schedule, formed, at the time I left the workyard in the end of October, a considerable pile, bearing ample testimony to the diligence and zeal of Mr James Scott, the foreman of the workyard and leader of the party ashore.
Owing to the uncertain and stormy weather in spring, it was not till the 13th of May, that the first landing was effected on the Rock.The Rock.The result of our visit, however, was most satisfactory. We found the Barrack quite as we had last seen it six months before; and not one joint of the pile of masonry, which we had left exposed to the waves, had been shaken orstarted. The Railway and Landing Wharf, although much exposed to the breach of the sea, had survived the winter’s storms with no greater damage than the loss of one of the sleepers or beams, on which the rails rested, which had been torn by the waves from its fixtures to the rock. It was not till a week after our first landing that we were enabled again to take up our quarters on the Rock; for we had few landings in the mean time, and some of them, owing to the heavy surfwhich played round the Rock, were of no very satisfactory kind. Our first experience of this season was indeed far from inviting. So difficult was the first landing, that we were forced to direct all our endeavours to laying in a small stock of provisions in the Barrack, before being left on the Rock; and, considering the scanty nature of the supplies which the weather permitted us to secure, it was thought prudent to restrict the number of men to eight masons and myself, with as many tools as we could land, to enable them to make the necessary repairs and arrangements before fairly commencing for the season the works of a more strictly progressive character. The vessel then returned to Tyree with the rest of the men and all the heavy apparatus which we could not land; and, to add to the unpleasantness of being left in such a position, with the improbability of a visit from the vessel for several days, one of the masons took alarmingly ill soon after the steamer was too far off for a signal, and suffered so acutely during the whole night, that his piercing cries in the spasms which accompanied his disorder, combined with the howling of a strongnorth-westerand the incessant lash of the waves, deprived the whole party of sleep during the first night. In this uncomfortable predicament, until the steamer returned on the 22d, we spent two days exposed to winds piercingly cold and in apartments soaked with spray, which found its way through inlets which had been made by the winter’s storms. We were not sorry, at the same time, to have an opportunity of removing the poor man to the care of Dr Campbell, the surgeon who was attached to the workyard at Hynish and of reinforcing our stock of provisions and the detachment of men. We also succeeded in landing the cranes and other building apparatus, which, owing to the heavy surf on the 20th, we had not been able to accomplish.
The few first days after getting fairly established in our habitation for the season, were occupied in extending the railway to a point on the northern part of the Rock, somewhat sheltered during certain seas (seePlate III.), where a crane for stowing the materialspreviously to building them had been erected; and thus it was not till the 25th of May that the first cargo of stones was landed. Next day a crane (then thirty-four years old), which had been used in the building of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, was placed on the top of the masonry, and the more cheering operations of mixing the mortar and ofsettingstones were begun.
In spite of the unfavourable state of the weather and the continual distraction of our exertions, occasioned by storms and the landing of materials, we continued our operations with such vigour as to complete the solid part of the masonry of the Tower on the 8th July. Until the building had reached to the level of 15 feet, the work was carried on by the use of two jib-cranes, one on the Rock and the other on the Tower, by means of which latter the stones wereset, after beingbrought to handby the first. But above that level,shear-legssimilar to those used at the Eddystone, were employed. Those shear-legs were about 50 feet high, and were erected in the situation, at the side of the Tower, shewn inPlate III.They consisted of two spars attached at the base tojointedsocketsbattedinto the Rock, and connected at the top by means of a crosshead of timber. The jointed sockets permitted the shears to hang forward at any angle suited to the level and distance of the part of the Tower to be reached; and chain guys both in front and behind, secured them from falling either backwards or forwards. At the crosshead hung an iron sheave with a chain, one end of which was provided with a hook for raising stones, while the other was wound around the barrel of acrab machinewell batted down to the rock, by working which the blocks were raised to such a level as to be within reach of the building crane on the top of the masonry. Theshear-poleswere used, until the building of the Tower was completed, to raise the stones the first lift of forty feet above the Rock. In the later stages of the work, the stones, instead of being taken by the building cranes directly from theshear-poles, were raised from storey to storey by means of crabs placed inside the Tower, which worked chains,reevedthroughsheaves hanging from the end of beams projecting from the windows. Such beams are calledneedles, and are described at page 504, and shewn in Plate IX., fig. 3, of my Father’s Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, where they were used for the same purpose.
During the early part of the season the weather was intensely cold, with showers of sleet and heavier showers of spray, which dashed round us in all directions, to the great discomfort of the poor masons, whose apartments did not admit of a large wardrobe, while they had not the benefit of much room for drying their clothes at the smallcobooseor cooking-stove in the Barrack. For days together, also, the men were left without building materials, owing to the impossibility of landing them, or, what was worse, without the power of building what we had on hand in consequence of the violence of the winds. During such times we often felt much anxiety about the safety of the stones which we had piled on the rock ready for being built; and it took no small trouble, by the occasional application of the crane, to save them from being swept into the sea by the surf.The Waves.Nothing struck me more than the illusive effect produced on the mind by the great waves which rolled past the rock. The rapidity of their movements, and the noise which accompanied their passage through the gullies and rents of the rugged reef, seemed to give them the appearance of being much larger than they really were; and, even when viewed from the Tower, after it had risen to the height of 30 feet, they seemed, on approaching the rock, to be on the eve of washing right over the top of the building and sweeping all before them into the sea. It was a long time before, by continually watching the waves and comparing their apparent height with the results of their impact on the rock, we were enabled to correct our notions of their magnitude, so as to mark the approach of their crested curling heads with composure; and some of the party never became sufficiently familiarized with those visitors, to avoid suddenly looking roundwhen the rush of a breaker was heard behind them, or recoiling a few paces when they saw its towering crest apparently about to burst in a torrent over their heads. It was only after a long residence on the rock and continual experimental observation, that I acquired confidence to approach within a few feet of the point which I expected the breakers to reach. I occasionally suffered for my temerity, by being thoroughly drenched with spray; but by long perseverance, I attained considerable skill in predicting the limits of their influence, though ever and anon an extraordinary wave overthrew all our confidence, by bursting far above the boundaries which we had assigned in our minds. That, however, did not generally occur in calm weather, but after strong gales from the N.W., when the waves had assumed the larger and more flattened form known by the name of theground-swell. To gauge the height of those waves by means of a vertical rod, graduated with large divisions, so as to be read at a little distance, as the waves washed it in passing, was an object I had long in view; but I found it utterly impossible to apply any fixture in the deep water, in a situation fitted for the purpose. By making numerous comparisons, however, of the waves, with various known points of rock near the main Rock, and by availing myself of the observations of some of the more intelligent of the masons, I was led to conclude, that the greatest elevation of an unbroken wave, measuring from the hollow to the crest, does not, in the sea around the Skerryvore, exceed 15 feet; but the sailors, perhaps from their being less accustomed to accurate measurement, generally estimated it at 30 or even 40 feet.Colours of breaking Waves.I was often much interested, while I sat watching the waves that boiled round us on every side, to observe the peculiar tints which they assumed at the moment of breaking, passing as they did from the bluish-green colour of solid water by very rapid changes, to a delicate and very evanescentblushof rose colour, which invariably accompanied their greatest state of comminution or disintegration. Those appearances I haveoften observed in other places, and I supposed them to be produced byreflection from the thin plates of water; and took them for indications of the perfect homogeneousness of the sea-water, in regard to density, and also of the similarity of its condition at themomentof breaking.
The Seals.Amongst the many wonders of the “great deep,” which we witnessed at the Skerryvore, not the least is the agility and power displayed by the unshapely seal. I have often seen half a dozen of those animals round the Rock, playing on the surface or riding on the crests of curling waves, come so close as to permit us to see their eyes and head, and lead us to expect that they would be thrownhigh and dryat the foot of the Tower; when suddenly they performed a somersault within a few feet of the Rock, and diving into the flaky and wreathing foam, disappeared and as suddenly reappeared a hundred yards off, uttering a strange low cry, as we supposed, of satisfaction at having caught a fish. At such times the surf often drove among the crevices of the Rock a bleeding cod, from whose back a seal had taken a single moderate bite, leaving the rest to some less fastidious fisher.
The latter part of the season, although not so stormy as the first, was far from being favourable for the building operations which, on one occasion, even during the month of July, were suspended for five days by a violent gale, which made it unsafe to attempt standing on the Tower. Happily the wind was from the N.E., a quarter from which it has comparatively little power in raising heavy seas, otherwise we should infallibly have lost a large part of the dressed materials which lay piled on the Rock, and, in all probability, should have had our work thus prematurely cut short in the middle of summer.
After building a few courses above the level of the solid part of the Tower, the jib-crane could no longer be conveniently used, and recourse was had to abalance-crane, which, during the previous winter, I had caused to be constructed at Edinburgh, in the workshop of Mr James Dove. That apparatus, which, except asto its greater size and strength, in order to suit the greater dimensions of the Tower, was almost identical with that which was used at the Bell Rock, is shewn inPlate IX.; and it is only necessary, in this place, to notice its general construction and mode of working, which is also shewn in Plate XVII. of my Father’s Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse. In the hollow of the Tower, a cast-iron pipe or pillar was erected, susceptible of being lengthened as the Tower rose, by means of additional pieces of pillar let in byspigot and faucet joints; and on the pillar a frame of iron was placed capable of revolving freely round it, and carrying two trussed arms and a double train of barrels and gearing. On the one arm hung a cylindric weight of cast-iron, which could be moved along it by means of the gearing, so as to increase or diminish by leverage its effect as a counterpoise; and on the other was a roller. The roller was so connected with the weight on the opposite arm, as to move along with it, receding from, or approaching to, the centre pillar of iron in the same manner as the weight did. From the roller hung a sheave, over which a chain moved, with a hook at the end for raising the stones. When a stone was to be raised, the weight and the sheave were drawn out to the end of the arms of the crane, which projected over the outside of the walls of the Tower, and they were held in their places by simply locking the gearing which moved them. The second train of gearing was then brought into play to work the chain which hung over the sheave, and so to raise the stone to a height sufficient to clear the top of the wall. When in that position, the first train of gearing was slowly unlocked and the slight declivity inwards from the end of the arms formed aninclined plane, along which the roller carrying the sheave was allowed slowly to move (one man using a break on the gearing to prevent a rapid run), while the first train of gearing was slowly wound by the others, so as to take up the chain which passed over the sheave, and thus to keep the stone from descending too low in proportion as it approached the centre of the Tower. When the stone soraised had reached such a position as to hang right over the wall, the crane was made to turn round the centre column in any direction that was necessary, in order to bring it exactly above the place where it was to beset; and by working either train of gearing, it could be moved horizontally or vertically in any way that was required. The men who wrought the crane, stood on two small stages of planks attached to either side of the framework, and moving round the shaft along with it.
The balance-crane was safely landed on the Rock on the 20th July and on the 25th it was erected in working order on the top of the masonry. On the afternoon of that day, I had the satisfaction of seeing it put to a severe trial in raising a stone of nearly two tons weight and drawing it from theshear-polesalready noticed to the top of the building. As that trial was made at an earlier stage of the works than was originally intended, the Tower was of larger diameter than was quite suited to the arrangements of the crane, which was consequently subjected to the weight of the stone at the very point of the jib. I felt no small anxiety as to the result, and had taken the precaution to relieve the centre pillar or shaft, on which the crane swung, from part of its burden, by means of a guy attached to a lewis-bat on the top of the building; yet even with that aid, the point of the jib was depressed 6 or 8 inches on a length of 14 feet. That test, however, having been successfully passed and not the slightest trace of any injury having been discoverable in any part of the crane, we continued to work it with perfect confidence and in the most satisfactory manner throughout the whole season until the close of the Rock operations for the year on the 17th of August.
The mass of masonry built during the season was 30,300 cubic feet, a quantity considerably more than double that contained in the Eddystone and somewhat more than the mass of the Bell Rock. The whole was very carefullysetand when gauged at the upper bed of each course was found to preserve the diameter due to theheight, according to the calculated dimensions, within a fraction rarely exceeding ¹⁄₁₆th of an inch. The height of the mass also, when measured, exceeded the specified height only byhalf an inch. The mortar employed was composed of equal parts of lime from the Halkin Mountain in North Wales and Pozzolano; and I consider it if possible superior to that produced from the lime of Aberdda. When we left the Rock this season, two apartments were covered in and the third was nearly completed, as will appear from the section (Plate III.) (on which the progress of the several seasons is marked), and only aboutone-thirdof the whole Tower remained to be built.
Our last work on the Rock before leaving it for the season on the 17th August, was to cover the balance-crane with a strong tarpaulin in order to protect it as much as possible from the weather and also to make a temporary lightning-conductor from the top of the building to the sea.
The extent of work done during the season of 1841 at the Rock, must in a great measure be attributed to the advantage of steam attendance, without which numerous favourable opportunities of landing materials must necessarily have been lost, from the uncertainty which pervades all the movements of sailing craft. The number of lighters towed out and discharged at the Rock was 120; and it is remarkable that no accident of importance occurred, although many risks were run, from the breaking of warps while the craft lay moored to the landing quay during heavy seas. I cannot omit in this place to record my sense of the services rendered to the works by the late Mr James Heddle, who commanded the steamer and who died from some consumptive disease soon after the close of the season’s operations. Mr Heddle’s health had been somewhat enfeebled towards the latter part of the autumn; and his excessive exertions and continued exposure during his arduous service, in some measure, I fear, hastened the crisis of his disease, which at length terminated suddenly by the rupture of an abscessin the lungs. Of his anxiety to forward the work, and his unwearied exertion in the discharge of his harassing duty at Skerryvore, which frequently allowed him less than twenty hours sleep in a week, I cannot speak too highly, as I consider his intrepidity and zeal to have been one of the most efficient causes of our success ever since the commencement of the works on the Rock in 1839. Mr Heddle possessed attainments superior to those generally found among persons in his walk of life and was in every respect a most estimable man.