"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 never
entirely 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 geological formation 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 board the 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
thirty men, 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 the grain. "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 of news 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 L86,977. 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
shores of 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!"
Steam Navigation.
I.--JAMES SYMINGTON.
II.--ROBERT FULTON.
III.--HENRY BELL.
IV.--OCEAN STEAMERS.
Steam Navigation.