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
the nearest 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 century that 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 temporary pyramid 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 their clothes, 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 the _Smeaton_ drifting 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 by a 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.