FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[C]The wind is calculated to travel at the rate of eighty-two feet in a second; the pace of a steam-engine, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, would be rather more.

[C]The wind is calculated to travel at the rate of eighty-two feet in a second; the pace of a steam-engine, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, would be rather more.

"Far in the bosom of the deep,O'er these wild shelves my watch I keep:A ruddy gleam of changeful light,Bound on the dusky brow of night;The seaman bids my lustre hail,And scorns to strike his timorous sail."—Scott.

When worthy Mr. Phillips, the Liverpool Quaker, taking thought in what way he could best benefit his fellow-creatures, built the beacon on the Smalls Rock in 1772, he could hardly have made a happier selection of "a great good to serve and save humanity." There are few enterprises more heroic or beneficent than those connected with the construction and management of lighthouses. From first to last, from the rearing of the column on the rock to the monotonous, nightly vigil in attendance on the lamps—from the setting to the rising of the sun—the valour, intrepidity, and endurance, of all concerned are called into play, and the wild perils and stirring adventures they experience impart to the story of their labours a thrilling and romantic interest. In the case of the Smalls Lighthouse, for instance, Whiteside, the self-taught engineer, and his party of Cornish miners had no sooner landed,and got a long iron shaft worked a few feet into the rock, than a storm arose that drove away their cutter, and kept them clinging with the tenacity of despair to the half-fastened rod for three days and two nights, when the wind fell and the sea calmed, and they were rescued, rather dead than alive, numbed from their long immersion in the water, which rose almost to their necks, and exhausted from want of food. And after the lighthouse had been erected, the engineer and some of his men again found themselves, as a paper in a bottle they had cast into the sea revealed to those on shore, in a "most dangerous and distressed condition on the Smalls," cut off from the mainland by the stormy weather, without fuel, and almost at the end of their stock of food and water—in which alarming situation they had to remain some time before their friends could get out to their relief. Most sea-girt beacons have their own legends of similar perils and fortitude; and the narratives of the erection of the three great lighthouses of Eddystone, Inchcape, and Skerryvore, which may be selected as the types of the rest, are full of incidents as exciting as any "hair breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach."

About fourteen miles south from Plymouth, and ten from the Ram's Head, on the Cornish coast, lies a perilous reef of rocks, against which the long rolling swell of the Atlantic waves dashes with appallingforce, and breaks up into those swirling eddies from which the reef is named—the Eddystone. Upon these treacherous crags many a gallant vessel has foundered and gone down within sight of the shore it had scarcely quitted or was just about to reach; and situated in the midst of a much frequented track, the rapid succession of calamities at the Eddystone was not long in awakening men's minds to the necessity of some warning light. The exposure of the reef to the wild fury of the Atlantic, and the small extent of the surface of the chief rock, however, rendered the construction of a lighthouse in such a situation a work of great and (as it was long considered) insuperable difficulty. The project was long talked of before any one was found daring enough to attempt the task; and when at length in 1696 Henry Winstanley stepped forward to undertake it, he might have been thought of all others the very last from whose brain so serious a conception would have emanated. The great hobby of his life had been to fill his house at Littlebury, in Essex, with mechanical devices of the most absurd and fantastic kind. If a visitor, retiring to his bedroom, kicked aside an old slipper on the floor, purposely thrown in his way, up started a ghost of hideous form. If, startled at the sight, he fell back into an arm chair placed temptingly at hand, a pair of gigantic arms would instantly spring forth and clasp him a prisoner in their rude embrace. Tired of these disagreeable surprises, the astonished guest perhaps took refuge in the garden, and sought repose in a pleasant arbour by the side of a canal; but he had scarcely seated himself, when he found himself suddenly set adrift on the water, where he floated about till his whimsical host came to his relief. Such was the man who now entered upon one of the most formidable engineering enterprises in the world.

Although Winstanley's lighthouse was but a slight affair compared with its successors, it occupied six years in the erection—the frequent rising of the sea over the rock, and the difficulty and danger of passing to and from it greatly retarding the operations, and rendering them practicable only during a short summer season. For ten or fourteen days after a storm had passed, and when all was calm elsewhere, the ground-swell from the Atlantic was often so heavy among these rocks that the waves sprang two hundred feet, and more, in the air, burying the works from sight. The first summer was spent in boring twelve holes in the rock, and fixing therein twelve large irons as a holdfast for the works that were to be reared. The next season saw the commencement of a round pillar, which was to form the steeple of the tower, as well as afford protection to the workmen while at their labours. When Winstanley bade farewell to the rock for that year, the tower had risen to the height of twelve feet; and resuming operations next spring, he built at it till it reachedthe height of eighty feet. Having got the apartments fit for occupation, and the lantern set up, Winstanley determined to take up his abode there with his men, in order that no time might be lost in going to and from the rock. The first night they spent on the rock a great storm arose, and for eleven days it was impossible to hold any communication with the shore. "Not being acquainted with the height of the sea's rising," writes the architect, "we were almost drowned with wet, and our provisions in as bad a condition, though we worked night and day as much as possible to make shelter for ourselves." The storm abating, they went on shore for a little repose; but soon returning, set to work again with undiminished energy.

On the 14th November of the same year (1698), Winstanley lighted his lantern for the first time. A long spell of boisterous weather followed, and it was not till three days before Christmas that they were able to quit their desolate abode, being "almost at the last extremity for want of provisions; but by good Providence then two boats came with provisions and the family that was to take care of the light; and so ended this year's work."

It was soon found that the sea rose to a much greater height than had been anticipated, the lantern, although sixty feet above the rock, being often "buried under water." Winstanley was, therefore, under the necessity of enlarging the tower and carrying it to agreater elevation. The fourth season, accordingly, was spent in encasing the tower with fresh outworks, and adding forty feet to its height. This proved too high for its strength to bear; and in the course of three years the winds and waves had made sad havoc in the unstable fabric.

In November 1703, Winstanley went out to the rock himself, accompanied by his workmen, to institute the repairs. As he was putting off in the boat from Plymouth, a friend who had for some time before been watching the condition of the lighthouse with much anxiety, mentioned to him his suspicion that it was in a bad way, and could not last long. Winstanley, full of faith in the stability of his work, replied that "he only wished to be there in the greatest storm that ever blew under the face of the heavens, that he might see what effect it would have on his structure." And with these words he shoved off from the beach, and made for the rock.

With the last gleams of daylight, before the night fell and shrouded it from view, the tower was seen rising proudly from the midst of the waters. Before the dawn it had disappeared for ever, and the waves were lashing fiercely round the bare bleak ledge of the fatal rock. Poor Winstanley had had his presumptuous wish only too fully realized. The storm of the 26th November was one of the most fearful that ever ravaged our shores. The whole coast suffered severely from its fury, and when the morning came, not a sign remained of the lighthouse, architect, or workmen, save a fragment of chain-cable wedged firmly into a crevice of the rock. The disappearance of the warning light was quickly followed by the wreck of a large homeward-bound man-of-war, and the loss of nearly all her crew, upon the rocks.

This first Eddystone lighthouse was a strange, fantastic looking structure, deficient in every element of stability, and the wonder was not that it fell in pieces as it did, but that it was able to withstand so long the boisterous weather of the Channel. But if of little merit as an architect, Winstanley at least deserves respect, as Smeaton remarks, for the heroism he displayed in undertaking "a piece of work that before had been looked on as impossible."

For four years the Eddystone remained bare and untenanted, till, in the summer of 1706, the erection of a new lighthouse was commenced under the superintendence of John Rudyerd, by profession a silk-mercer in Ludgate Hill, but by natural genius an engineer of considerable merit. With such skill and energy did he apply himself to the work, that before two summers were over his tower was completed, and its friendly light beamed over the troubled waters and sunken crags. Rudyerd's lighthouse was entirely of wood, weighted at the base by a few courses of mason work, and 92 feet in height. In form, it was a smooth, solid cone of elegant simplicity, unbroken by any of those ornamental outworks, which offered the wind and sea so many points to lay hold of, in Winstanley's whimsical pagoda. Smeaton speaks of Rudyerd's tower as a masterly performance; and had it not been destroyed by fire, forty-six years after its erection, there seems little reason to suppose it might not have been standing to this day,—although no doubt the ravages of the worm in the wood would have demanded frequent repairs. On the 2d December 1755, some fishermen who happened to be on the beach very early in the morning preparing their nets, were startled by the sight of volumes of smoke issuing from the lighthouse. They instantly gave the alarm, and a boat was quickly manned for the relief of the sufferers. It did not reach the rock till about ten o'clock, and the fire had then been raging for eight hours. It was first discovered by the light-keeper upon watch who, going into the lantern about two o'clock in the morning to snuff the candles, found the place filled with smoke. He opened the door of the lantern into the balcony, and a mass of flame immediately burst from the inside of the cupola. He lost no time in seizing the buckets of water kept at hand, and dashing them over the fire, but without effect. His two companions were asleep, and it was some time before they heard his shouts for assistance. When at length they did bestir themselves, all the water in the house was exhausted. The light-keeper—an old man in his ninety-fourth year—urged them to replenish the buckets from the sea; but the difficulty of lowering the buckets to such a depth, and their confusion and terror at the sudden catastrophe and their impending fate, destroyed their presence of mind, and rendered them quite powerless. The old man did his best to prevent the advance of the flames; but, exhausted by the unavailing labour, and severely injured by the melting lead from the roof, he had to desist. As the fire spread from point to point, with rapid strides descending from the summit to the base, the poor wretches fled before it, retreating from room to room, till at last they were driven to seek shelter from the blazing timbers and red hot bars, in a cleft of the rock. There they were found by their preservers, crouching together half dead with suffering and fright. It was with the greatest difficulty that they were got into the boat; and they had no sooner reached the shore than one of them, crazed by the terrors he had undergone, ran away, and was never heard of more. The old man lingered on for a few days in great agony, and died from the injuries he had received.

Such was the fate of the second lighthouse on the Eddystone,—one element revenging, as it were, the conquest over another.

In spite of the fatality which seemed to attend these lighthouses, the lessees of the Eddystone—for it was then in private hands, and did not come intothe hands of the Trinity House till many years after—resolved to make another attempt; and this time they selected as the architect one of the ablest professional men of the day, and with sagacious liberality, adopted his advice to build it of stone and granite.

Smeaton truly belonged to the class of heaven-born engineers. From his earliest years the bent of his genius unmistakably revealed itself. Before he was six years old, he one day terrified his parents by climbing to the top of a barn to fix up some contrivance he had put together, after the fashion of a windmill; and another time he constructed a pump that raised water, after watching some workmen sinking one. And as he grew older, his efforts took a more ambitious range, and were all equally remarkable for their originality and success. His father destined him for the bar; but his inclination for engineering was so irresistible, that he allowed him to resign all chance of the woolsack, and set up in business as a mathematical instrument maker. He gradually advanced to the profession of civil engineering,—which he was the first man in England to pursue, and which he may be said to have created.

It was in 1756 he commenced the construction of the great work which may be regarded as the monument of his fame. Having decided that his lighthouse should be of stone, the next point to be settledwas its form. His thoughts, he tells us in his book, instinctively reverted to the analogy between a lighthouse shaft and the trunk of a stately oak. He remarked the spreading roots taking a broad, firm grip of the soil, the rise of the swelling base, gradually lessening in girth in a graceful curve, till a preparation being required for the support of the spreading boughs, a renewed swelling of diameter takes place; and he held that cutting off the branches we have, in the trunk of an oak, a type of such a lighthouse column as is best adapted to resist the influence of the winds and waves. Whether or not Smeaton arrived at the form of his lighthouse, which has since become the model for all others, from this fanciful analogy, its appearance rising from the rock presents a strong resemblance to a noble tree stripped of its boughs and foliage.

Smeaton commenced the undertaking by visiting the rock in the spring of 1756, accurately measuring its very irregular surface, and in order to ensure exactness in his plans, making a model of it. In the summer of the same year he prepared the foundation by cutting the surface of the rock in regular steps or trenches, into which the blocks of stone were to be dovetailed. The first stone was laid in June 1757, and the last in August 1759. Of that period there were only 431 days when it was possible to stand on the rock, and so small a portion even of these was available for carrying on the work, that it iscalculated the building in reality occupied but six weeks. The whole was completed without the slightest accident to any one; and so well were all the arrangements made, that not a minute was lost by confusion or delay amongst the workmen.

The tower measures 86 feet in height, and 26 feet in diameter at the level of the first entire course, the diameter under the cornice being only 15 feet. The first twelve feet of the structure form a solid mass of masonry,—the blocks of stone being held together by means of stone joggles, dovetailed joints, and oaken tree-nails. All the floors of the edifice are arched; to counteract the possible outburst of which, Smeaton bound the courses of his stone work together by belts of iron chain, which, being set in grooves while in a heated state, by the application of hot lead, on cooling, of course, tightened their clasp on the tower. Throughout the whole work the greatest ingenuity is displayed in obtaining the greatest amount of resistance, and combining the two great principles of strength and weight,—technically speaking, cohesion and inertia.

On the 16th October 1759, the warning light once more, after an interval of four years, shone forth over the troubled waters from the dangerous rock; but it was but a feeble illumination at the best, for it came from only a group of tallow candles. It was better than nothing, certainly; but the exhibition of a few glimmering candles was but apaltry conclusion to so stupendous an undertaking. For many years, however, no stronger light gleamed from the tower, till, in 1807, when it passed from the hands of private proprietors into the charge of the Trinity House, the mutton dips were supplanted by Argand burners, with silvered copper reflectors.

Imperfect, however, as used to be the lighting apparatus, the Eddystone Beacon has always been a great boon to all those "that go down to the sea in great ships," and has robbed these perilous waters of much of their terror. We can readily sympathize with the exultation of the great engineer who reared it, when standing on the Hoe at Plymouth, he spent many an hour, with his telescope, watching the great swollen waves, in powerless fury, dash against his tower, and "fly up in a white column, enwrapping it like a sheet, rising at the least to double the height of the tower, and totally intercepting it from sight." It is now more than a hundred years since Smeaton's Lighthouse first rose upon the Eddystone; but, in spite of the many furious storms which have put its stability to rude and searching proof, it still lifts its head proudly over the waves, and shows no signs of failing strength.

The Inch Cape, or Bell Rock, is a long, narrow reef on the east coast of Scotland, at the mouth of the Frith of Tay, and some dozen of miles from thenearest land. At high water the whole ledge is buried out of sight; and even at the ebb the highest part of it is only three or four feet out of the water. In the days of old, as the tradition goes, one of the abbots of Arbroath, among many good works, exhibited his piety and humanity by placing upon a float attached to the perilous reef a large bell, so suspended as to be tolled by the rising and falling of the waves.

"On a buoy, in the storm it floated and swung,And over the waves its warning rung."

Many a storm-tossed mariner heard the friendly knell that warned him of the nearness of the fatal rock, and changed his course before it was too late, with blessings on the good old monk who had hung up the bell; but after some years, one of the pirates who infested the coast cut it down in wanton cruelty, and was one of the first who suffered from the loss. Not long after, he perished upon this very rock, which a dense fog shrouded from sight, and no bell gave timely warning of.

"And even in his dying fear,One dreadful sound did the rover hear;A sound as if with the Inch Cape Bell,The devil below was ringing his knell."

After the lapse of many years, two attempts were made to raise a beacon of spars upon the rock; but one after the other they fell a prey to the angry waves, and were hardly set up before they disappeared. It was not till the beginning of the centurythat the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses took up the idea of erecting a lighthouse on this reef, the most dangerous on all the coast. Several years elapsed before they got the sanction of Parliament to the undertaking, and 1807 arrived before it was actually entered upon.

Mr. Robert Stevenson, to whom the work was intrusted as engineer, had from a very early age been employed in connection with lighthouses. He went almost directly from school to the office of Mr. Thomas Smith of Edinburgh, and when that gentleman was appointed engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners, became his assistant, and afterwards successor. When only nineteen, Mr. Stevenson superintended the construction of the lighthouse on the island of Little Cumbray; and during the time he was engineer to the Commissioners, which post he held till 1842, he erected no fewer than forty-two lighthouses, and introduced a great many valuable improvements into the system. His reputation, however, will be chiefly perpetuated as the architect of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.

On the 17th August 1807, Mr. Stevenson and his men landed on the rock, to the astonishment and discomposure of the seals who had, from time immemorial, been in undisturbed possession of it, and now floundered off into the water on the approach of the usurpers. The workmen at once set about preparing the rock for the erection of a temporarypyramid on which a barrack-house was to be placed for the reception of the workmen. They could only work on the rock for a few hours at spring-tide. As soon as the flood-tide began to rise around them, putting out the fire of the smith's forge, and gradually covering the rock, they had to gather up their tools and retreat to a floating barrack moored at a considerable distance, in order to reach which they had to row in small boats to the tender, by which they were then conveyed to their quarters. The operations of this first season were particularly trying to the men, on account of their having to row backwards and forwards between the rock and the tender at every tide, which in rough weather was a very heavy pull, and having often after that to work on the rock knee deep in water, only quitting it for the boats when absolutely compelled by the swelling waves. Sometimes the sea would be so fierce for days together that no boat could live in it, and the men had, therefore, to remain cooped up wearily on board the floating barrack.

One day in September, when the engineer and thirty-one men were on the rock, the tender broke from its moorings, and began to drift away from the rock, just as the tide was rising. Mr. Stevenson, perched on an eminence above the rest, surveying them at their labours, was the first, and for a while, the men being all intent on their work, the only one, who observed what had happened. He said nothing,but went to the highest point of the rock, and kept an anxious watch on the progress of the vessel and the rising of the sea. First the men on the lower tier of the works, then by degrees those above them, struck work on the approach of the water. They gathered up their tools and made towards the spot where the boats were moored, to get their jackets and stockings and prepare for quitting the rock. What their feelings were when they found only a couple of boats there, and the tender drifting off with the other in tow, may be conceived. All the peril of their situation must have flashed across their minds as they looked across the raging sea, and saw the distance between the tender and the rock increasing every moment, while all around them the water rose higher and higher. In another hour, the waves would be rolling twelve feet and more above the crag on which they stood, and all hope of the tender being able to work round to them was being quickly dissipated. They watched the fleeting vessel and the rising tide, and their hearts sank within them, but not a word was uttered. They stood silently counting their numbers and calculating the capacity of the boats; and then they turned their eyes upon their trusted leader, as if their last hope lay in his counsel. Stevenson never forgot the appalling solemnity of the moment. One chance, and but a slender one, of escape alone occurred to him. It was that, stripping themselves of theirclothes, and divesting the two boats, as much as possible, of everything that weighted and encumbered them, so many men should take their seats in the boats, while the others hung on by the gunwales; and that they should then work their way, as best they could, towards either the tender or the floating barrack. Stevenson was about to explain this to his men, but found that all power of speech had left him. The anxiety of that dreadful moment had parched his throat, and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He stooped to one of the little pools at his feet to moisten his fevered lips with the salt water. Suddenly a shout was raised, "A boat! A boat!" and through the haze a large pilot boat could dimly be discerned making towards the rock. The pilot had observed theSmeatondrifting off, and, guessing at once the critical position of the workmen on the rock, had hastened to their relief.

Next morning when the bell sounded on board the barrack for the return to the rock, only eight out of the twenty-six workmen, beside the foreman and seamen, made their appearance on deck to accompany their leader. Mr. Stevenson saw it would be useless to argue with them then. So he made no remark, and proceeded with the eight willing workmen to the rock, where they spent four hours at work. On returning to the barrack, the eighteen men who had remained on board appeared quite ashamed of their cowardice; and without a word being said to them,were the first to take their places in the boats when the bell rang again in the afternoon.

At length the barrack was completed, and the men were then relieved from the toil of rowing backwards and forwards between the tender and the rock, as well as from the constant sickness which tormented them on board the floating barrack. They were now able to prolong their labours, when the tide permitted, into the night. At such times the rock assumed a singularly picturesque and romantic aspect—its surface crowded with men in all variety of attitudes, the two forges and numerous torches lighting up the scene, and throwing a lurid gleam across the waters, and the loud dong of the anvils mingling with the dashing of the breakers.

On the 18th July 1808, the site having been properly excavated, the first stone of the lighthouse was laid by the Duke of Argyle; and by the end of the second season some five or six feet of building had been erected, and were left to the mercy of the waves till the ensuing spring. The third season's operations raised the masonry to a height of thirty feet above the sea, and the fourth season saw the completion of the tower. On the first night in February of the succeeding year (1811) the lamp was lit, and beamed forth across the waters.

The Bell Rock Tower is 100 feet in height, 42 feet in diameter at the base, and 15 feet at the top. The door is 30 feet from the base, and the ascent is bya massive bronze ladder. The "light" is revolving, and presents a white and red light alternately, by means of shades of red glass arranged in a frame. The machinery which causes the revolution of the lamp is also applied to the tolling of two large bells, in order to give warning to the mariner of his approach to the rock in foggy weather, thus reviving the traditional practice from which the rock takes its name.

"Having crept upon deck about four in the morning, I find we are beating to windward off the Isle of Tyree, with the determination on the part of Mr. Stevenson that his constituents should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor, where he thought it would be essential to have a lighthouse. Loud remonstrances on the part of the commissioners, who one and all declare they will subscribe to his opinion, whatever it may be, rather than continue this dreadful buffeting. Quiet perseverance on the part of Mr. Stevenson, and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the yacht, who seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, came in sight of this long range of rocks (chiefly under water), on which the tide breaks in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low broad rocks at one end of the reef which is about a mile in length. These are neverentirely under water, though the surf dashes over them. We took possession of it in the name of the commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr. Stevenson. It will be a most desolate position for a lighthouse—the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at 14 miles distance."

Such is an entry in the diary of Sir Walter Scott's Yacht Tour, on the 27th August 1814; but although the necessity of a lighthouse on the Skerry Vhor, or, as it is now generally called, Skerryvore, was fully acknowledged by the authorities, it was not till twenty-four years afterwards that the undertaking was actually commenced, under the superintendence of Mr. Alan Stevenson, the son of the eminent engineer who erected the Bell Rock Lighthouse.

In the execution of this great work, if the son had, as compared with his father, certain advantages in his favour, he had also various disadvantages to contend with at Skerryvore from which the engineer of the Bell Rock was free. Mr. Alan Stevenson had steam power at his command, and the benefit of all the experience derived from the experiments of his predecessors in similar operations; but at the same time, the rock on which he had to work was at a greater distance from the land, and separated from it by a more dangerous passage than that of either the Bell or the Eddystone; and the geologicalformation of which the rock is composed, was much more difficult to work upon. The Skerryvore is distant from Tyree, the nearest inhabited island, about 11 miles; even in fine weather the intervening passage is a trying one, and in rough weather no ship can live in such a sea, studded as it is with treacherous rocks. The sandstone of the Bell Rock is worn into rugged inequalities, which favoured the operations of the engineer; but the action of the waves on the igneous formation of the Skerryvore has given it all the smoothness and slippery polish of a mass of dark coloured glass. Indeed, the foreman of the masons, on first visiting the rock, not unjustly compared the operation of ascending it to that of "climbing up the neck of a bottle."

The 7th August 1838 was the first day of entire work on the rock, and with succeeding ones was spent in the erection of a temporary barrack of wood, for the men to lodge in on the rock. It was completed before the season closed; but one of the first heavy gales in November wrenched it from its holdings, and swept it into the sea, leaving nothing to mark the site but a few broken and twisted stanchions, attached to one of which was a portion of a great beam which had been shaken and rent, by dashing against the rocks, into a bundle of ribands. Thus in one night were obliterated the results of a whole season's toil, and with them, the hopes the men cherished of having a dwelling on the rock, instead of on boardthe brig, where they suffered intensely from the miseries of constant sickness.

The excavation of the foundations occupied the whole of the summer season of 1839, from the 6th May to the 3d September. The hard, nitrified rock held out stoutly against the assaults of both iron and gunpowder; and much time was spent in hollowing out the basin in which the lighthouse was to be fixed. From the limited extent of the rock and the absence of any place of shelter, the blasting was an operation of considerable danger, as the men had no place to run to, and it had to be managed with great caution. Only a small portion of the rock could be blown up at a time, and care had to be taken to cover the part over with mats and nettings made of old rope to check the flight of the stones. The excavation of the flinty mass occupied nearly two summers.

The operations of 1840 included, much to the delight of the workmen, the reconstruction of the barrack, to which they were glad to remove from the tossing vessel. The second edifice was more substantial than the first, and proved more enduring. Rude and narrow as it was, it offered, after the discomforts of the vessel, almost a luxurious lodging to its hardy inmates.

"Packed 40 feet above the weather-beaten rock, in this singular abode," writes the engineer, Mr. Alan Stevenson, "with a goodly company of thirtymen, I have spent many a weary day and night, at those times when the sea prevented any one going down to the rock, anxiously looking for supplies from the shore, and earnestly longing for a change of weather favourable to the recommencement of the works. For miles around nothing could be seen but white foaming breakers, and nothing heard but howling winds and lashing waves. Our slumbers, too, were at times fearfully interrupted by the sudden pouring of the sea over the roof, the rocking of the house on its pillars, and the spurting of water through the seams of the doors and windows; symptoms which, to one suddenly aroused from sound sleep, recalled the appalling fate of the former barrack, which had been engulphed in the foam not twenty yards from our dwelling, and for a moment seemed to summon us to a similar fate. On two occasions in particular, these sensations were so vivid as to cause almost every one to spring out of bed; and some of the men fled from the barrack by a temporary gangway to the more stable, but less comfortable shelter afforded by the bare walls of the lighthouse tower, then unfinished, where they spent the remainder of the night in the darkness and the cold."

In spite of their anxiety to get on with the work, and their intrepidity in availing themselves of every opportunity, these gallant men were often forced by stress of weather into an inactivity which we may be sure they felt sadly irksome and against thegrain. "At such seasons," says Mr. Stevenson, "much of our time was spent in bed, for there alone we had effectual shelter from the winds and the spray which reached every cranny in the walls of our barrack." On one occasion they were for fourteen days without communication with the shore, and when at length the seas subsided, and they were able to make the signal to Tyree that a landing at the rock was practicable, scarcely twenty-four hours' stock of provisions remained on the rock. In spite of hardships and perils, however, the engineer declares that "life on the Skerryvore Rock was by no means destitute of its peculiar pleasures. The grandeur of the ocean's rage—the deep murmur of the waves—the hoarse cry of the sea birds, which wheeled continually over us, especially at our meals—the low moaning of the wind—or the gorgeous brightness of a glossy sea and a cloudless sky—and the solemn stillness of a deep blue vault, studded with stars, or cheered by the splendours of the full moon,—were the phases of external things that often arrested our thoughts in a situation where, with all the bustle that sometimes prevailed, there was necessarily so much time for reflection. Those changes, together with the continual succession of hopes and fears connected with the important work in which we were engaged, and the oft recurring calls for advice or direction, as well as occasional hours devoted to reading and correspondence, and the pleasures ofnews from home, were more than sufficient to reconcile me to—nay, to make me really enjoy—an uninterrupted residence, on one occasion, of not less than five weeks on that desert rock."

The Skerryvore Lighthouse was at length successfully completed. The height of the tower is 138 feet 6 inches, of which the first 26 feet is solid. It contains a mass of stone work of more than double the quantity of the Bell Rock, and nearly five times that of the Eddystone. The entire cost, including steam tug and the building of a small harbour at Hynish for the reception of the little vessel that now attends the lighthouse, was £86,977. The light is revolving, and reaches its brightest state once every minute. It is produced by the revolution of eight great annular lenses around a central light, with four wicks, and can be seen from the deck of a vessel at the distance of 18 miles. Mr. Alan Stevenson sums up his deeply interesting narrative in the following words: "In such a situation as the Skerryvore, innumerable delays and disappointments were to be expected by those engaged in the work; and the entire loss of the fruit of the first season's labour in the course of a few hours, was a good lesson in the school of patience, and of trust in something better than an arm of flesh. During our progress, also, cranes and other materials were swept away by the waves; vessels were driven by sudden gales to seek shelter at a distance from the rocky shoresof Mull and Tyree; and the workmen were left on the rock desponding and idle, and destitute of many of the comforts with which a more roomy and sheltered dwelling, in the neighbourhood of friends, is generally connected. Daily risks were run in landing on the rock in a heavy surf, in blasting the splintery gneiss, or by the falling of heavy bodies from the tower on a narrow space below, to which so many persons were necessarily confined. Yet had we not any loss of either life or limb; and although our labours were prolonged from dawn to night, and our provisions were chiefly salt, the health of the people, with the exception of a few slight cases of dysentery, was generally good throughout the six successive summers of our sojourn on the rock. The close of the work was welcomed with thankfulness by all engaged in it; and our remarkable preservation was viewed, even by many of the most thoughtless, as, in a peculiar manner, the gracious work of Him by whom the very hairs of our heads are all numbered!"

Of the many triumphs of enterprise achieved by the agency of that tremendous power which James Watt tamed and put in harness for his race, perhaps the greatest and most momentous is that which has reversed the old proverb, that "time and tide wait for no man," given ten-fold meaning to the truth that "seas but join the regions they divide," and enabled our ships to dash across the trackless deep in spite of opposing elements,—

"Against wind, against tide,Steadying with upright keel,"

in a fraction of the time, and with a fraction of the cost and peril of the old mode of naval locomotion. How amply realized has been James Bell's prediction more than half a century ago, "I will venture to affirm that history does not afford an instance of such rapid improvement in commerce and civilization, as that which will be effected by steam vessels!"

Towards the close of the last century, a number of ingenious minds were in travail with the scheme of steam navigation. The Marquis de Jouffroy in France, and Fitch and Rumsey in America, were successful in experiments of its feasibility; but it isto the efforts of Miller and Symington in Scotland, followed up by those of Fulton and Bell, that we are chiefly and more immediately indebted for the practical development of the project.

Having a natural bent for mechanical contrivances, and abundance of leisure and money to indulge his tastes, Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire, somewhere about the year 1785, was full of schemes for driving ships by means of paddle-wheels,—by no means a novel idea, for it was known to the Romans, if not to the Egyptians, and had often been tried before.

All he aimed at originally was, to turn the wheels by the power of men or horses; and this he managed to do successfully enough. Single, double, and treble boats were often to be seen driving along Dalswinton Lake, moved by paddle-wheels instead of oars. On one occasion, at Leith, one of the double boats, sixty feet long, propelled by two wheels, each of which was turned by a couple of men, was matched against a Custom-house boat, which was reckoned a fast sailer. The paddle-wheels did duty very well; but the men were soon knocked up with turning them, and the want of some other motive power was strongly felt. A young man named Taylor, who was tutor to Mr. Miller's boys, is said to have suggested the use of steam; but whether this be so or not, it was not till Miller met with James Symington that the idea assumed a practical form.

In 1786 James Symington, then joint-engineer with his brother George, to the Wanlockhead Mines, was struck with the idea which, as we have seen, several other ingenious minds were also busy with about the same time,—of rendering the steam-engine available for locomotion both on land and sea. After much study and reflection, he succeeded in embodying the idea in a working model. It was supported on four wheels, which were moved in any direction by means of a small steam-engine, and could carry 16 cwt., besides coals, water, &c. It was exhibited in Edinburgh in the summer of 1786, and made a considerable sensation. Mr. Miller, fond of all such inventions, did not fail to get a sight of Symington's locomotive engine, the first time he was in town. He was delighted with its ingenuity and completeness, and procured an interview with the author. Of course, Miller was full of his own experiments, and told Symington the whole story of his efforts to propel vessels by paddle-wheels, and the want of some stronger, and more constant power than that of men to turn the capstan, upon which the motion of the wheels depended. Symington at once expressed the opinion he had formed,—that steam was equally available for vessels as for carriages, and showed him how the steam-engine which he had devised for his locomotive could be applied to the paddle-wheels. Miller was so much struck by his statements, which he illustrated byreference to the model, that he determined to have an engine made on the same plan, and fitted into one of his double boats. Accordingly, an engine was built under Symington's directions and superintendence, sent to Dalswinton, and put together in October 1788. The engine, in a strong oak frame, was placed in the one half of a double pleasure-boat, the boiler occupying the other half, and the paddle-wheels being fixed in the middle.

The autumn was withering into winter, the yellow leaves were swirling to the ground with every little breath of wind, and the boughs were beginning to show forth bare and grim, when the little boat was launched upon the bosom of Dalswinton Loch. At length all the preparations were finished, and on the 14th November Mr. Miller had the delight of seeing the vessel gliding over the mimic waves of the lake at the rate of five miles an hour. The company on board the boat on that memorable occasion were—Mr. Miller himself, of course, nervous with pleasure and exultation; Taylor, the tutor; Alexander Nasmyth (the well-known landscape painter, and father of the man who, in the next generation, was to invent the wonderful steam-hammer, that knocks masses of iron about like putty, and can yet so moderate its force as to crack a nut without bruising the kernel); a brisk stripling with strongly marked features, by name Harry Brougham, afterwards to be Lord Chancellor of England, and perhaps the mostmany-sided genius of his time; and—last and greatest of the group—there was one of Mr. Miller's tenants, the farmer of Ellisland,—Robert Burns, the great bard of Scotland, enjoying to the full, no doubt, the novelty of the expedition, but, we must suppose, unconscious of its import and grand future consequences, since he has accorded it no commemorative verse. "Many a time," says Mr. James Nasmyth, son of the distinguished painter, "I have heard my father describe the delight which this first and successful essay at steam navigation yielded the party in question. I only wish Burns had immortalized it in fit, clinking rhyme, for, indeed, it was a subject worthy of his highest muse."

The experiment was next tried on a large scale with a canal boat, on the Forth and Clyde Canal, but one of the wheels broke. Not to be balked, Symington had stronger wheels made, and the next time the steam was put on, the vessel went off at the rate of seven miles an hour. The experiment was several times repeated with success. The vessel, however, was so slight, that many more trips would have knocked it to pieces; and it was therefore dismantled. The fitting up of these vessels, and the working of them, formed a heavy drain upon Mr. Miller's purse; and having laid satisfactory proof before the world that the thing could be done, he relinquished the enterprise, and left it to be worked out by others. Just then, however, no onecame forward to fill his place; and for some years the idea slumbered.

In 1801 Symington could not afford to indulge in further efforts at his own expense, but he found a patron in Lord Dundas, who commissioned him to construct a steam-tug for dragging canal boats. A stout, serviceable tug was built; and a series of experiments entered upon to test her efficiency, which cost upwards of £3000. One bleak, stormy spring-day in 1802, the people on the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal might have been seen staring with wonder, at the short, stumpy little tug pushing gallantly on at the rate of three or four miles an hour, with a strong wind right in her teeth, that no other vessel could make head against, and two loaded vessels (each of more than 70 tons burden) in tow. By itself, the tug could do six miles an hour without any great strain. The company made some objection, however, about the banks of the canal being injured, and the tug fell into disuse. It served an important end, though, in giving both Fulton and Bell a basis for their operations, and must be considered the parent of our modern steam-craft.

After Dr. Cartwright, the inventor of the power-loom, had retired penniless from his manufacturing enterprises, and had taken up his abode in London,one of the constant visitors at his modest residence in Marylebone Fields, was a thin, sharp-featured American, about twenty-eight years of age, an artist by profession, and formerly student of Benjamin West, who, however, was now much more interested in the art of engineering than the art of painting. From an early age he had shown a taste for mechanics, and was fond of spending his play-hours at school loitering about workshops and factories, watching the men at their work, and studying the machines and instruments they used. This sojourn in England had brought him into contact with the Duke of Bridgewater, the great canal projector, and Lord Stanhope, well known for his improvements in the printing press and other contrivances, in whose company his boyish bent towards mechanics was revived, and became quite a passion with him. He threw aside his brushes and palette, and applied himself to his favourite pursuit with heart and soul. Having formed the acquaintance of Cartwright, he became a daily visitor at his house, and the enthusiastic, good-natured doctor and he would sit debating for hours the great problem: "Whether it were practicable to move vessels by steam?" Fulton, eager, restless, vivacious, with pencil in hand, was perpetually sketching plans of paddle-wheels; while the doctor, calm, dignified, and earnest, equally engrossed in the subject, was contriving various modes of bringing steam to act upon them. Neither of themhad any doubt that the thing could be done, but the "how" long baffled them; and even though the doctor constructed "the model of a boat, which, being wound up like a clock, moved on the water in a highly satisfactory manner," nothing practical came of their cogitations till some years after.

While on a visit to Paris, Fulton was struck with the injury which standing navies of men-of-war inflicted on the mercantile marine, and gave his whole attention, as he says, "to find out the means of destroying such engines of oppression, by some method which would put it out of the power of any nation to maintain such a system, and compel every government to adopt the simple principles of education, industry, and a free circulation of its produce." The means presented itself to his mind in the shape of an explosive shell, called the torpedo, by which any ship of war could be blown to pieces; and for six or seven years he occupied himself in fruitless attempts to get first the government of France, and then that of England, to take up his project. He did not abandon his schemes with regard to steam-vessels, however; but, under the auspices of Mr. Livingstone, the American ambassador, made several experiments. One vessel of considerable size broke through the middle when the engines were placed on board, but a second one was rather more successful, though but a slow rate of movement was attained. His project came under the notice ofNapoleon, then First Consul, who did not fail to appreciate its value. "It was," he said, "capable of changing the face of the world;" and he directed a commission to inquire into its merits. Nothing came of it, however.

Shortly after, Fulton visited Scotland, and got an introduction to Symington, whom he pressed for a sight of his boat. Symington generously consented, and gave him a short sail on board the steam-tug. Fulton made no concealment of his intention of starting steamboats in his own country, whither he was about to return, and asked Symington to allow him to make a few notes of his observations on board. Symington had no objections; and, therefore, he says, "Fulton pulled out a memorandum book, and after putting several pointed questions respecting the general construction and effect of the machine, which I answered in a most explicit manner, he jotted down particularly everything then described, with his own remarks upon the boat while moving with him on board along the canal." Fulton was very liberal in his promises not to forget his assistance, if he got steamboats established in America; but Symington never heard anything more of him.

Fulton was at New York in 1806, and busy getting a steamboat put together. It was a costly undertaking, and he had little spare cash of his own; so he offered shares in the concern to his friends, but no one would have anything to do with so ridiculousa scheme, as they thought. "My friends," says Fulton, "were civil, but shy. They listened with patience to my explanations, but with a settled cast of incredulity on their countenances. I felt the full force of the lamentation of the poet,—

Back to Index Next