THE BELL ROCK INVADED
A year passed away. Nothing more was heard of Ruby Brand, and the
burglary was believed to be one of those mysteries which are destined
never to be solved.
About this time great attention was being given by Government to the
subject of lighthouses. The terrible number of wrecks that had taken
place had made a deep impression on the public mind. The position and
dangerous character of the Bell Rock, in particular, had been for a
long time the subject of much discussion, and various unsuccessful
attempts had been made to erect a beacon of some sort thereon.
There is a legend that in days of old one of the abbots of the
neighbouring monastery of Aberbrothoc erected a bell on the Inchcape
Rock, which was tolled in rough weather by the action of the waves on
a float attached to the tongue, and thus mariners were warned at
night and in foggy weather of their approach to the rock, the great
danger of which consists in its being a sunken reef, lying twelve
miles from the nearest land, and exactly in the course of vessels
making for the firths of Forth and Tay. The legend further tells how
that a Danish pirate, named Ralph the Rover, in a mischievous mood,
cut the bell away, and that, years afterwards, he obtained his
appropriate reward by being wrecked on the Bell Rock, when returning
from a long cruise laden with booty.
Whether this be true or not is an open question, but certain it is
that no beacon of any kind was erected on this rock until the
beginning of the nineteenth century, after a great storm in 1799 had
stirred the public mind, and set springs in motion, which from that
time forward have never ceased to operate.
Many and disastrous were the shipwrecks that occurred during the
storm referred to, which continued, with little intermission, for
three days. Great numbers of ships were driven from their moorings
in the Downs and Yarmouth Roads; and these, together with all vessels
navigating the German Ocean at that time, were drifted upon the east
coast of Scotland.
It may not, perhaps, be generally known that there are only three
great inlets or estuaries to which the mariner steers when overtaken
by easterly storms in the North Sea--namely, the Humber, and the
firths of Forth and Moray. The mouth of the Thames is too much
encumbered by sand-banks to be approached at night or during bad
weather. The Humber is also considerably obstructed in this way, so
that the Roads of Leith, in the Firth of Forth, and those of
Cromarty, in the Moray Firth, are the chief places of resort in
easterly gales. But both of these had their special risks.
On the one hand, there was the danger of mistaking the Dornoch Firth
for the Moray, as it lies only a short way to the north of the
latter; and, in the case of the Firth of Forth, there was the
terrible Bell Rock.
Now, during the storm of which we write, the fear of those two
dangers was so strong upon seamen that many vessels were lost in
trying to avoid them, and much hardship was sustained by mariners who
preferred to seek shelter in higher latitudes. It was estimated that
no fewer than seventy vessels were either stranded or lost during
that single gale, and many of the crews perished.
At one wild part of the coast, near Peterhead, called the Bullers of
Buchan, after the first night of the storm, the wrecks of seven
vessels were found in one cove, without a single survivor of the
crews to give an account of the disaster.
The "dangers of the deep" are nothing compared with the _dangers of
the shore_. If the hard rocks of our island could tell the tale of
their experience, and if we landsmen could properly appreciate it, we
should understand more clearly why it is that sailors love blue (in
other words, deep) water during stormy weather.
In order to render the Forth more accessible by removing the danger
of the Bell Rock, it was resolved by the Commissioners of Northern
Lights to build a lighthouse upon it. This resolve was a much bolder
one than most people suppose, for the rock on which the lighthouse
was to be erected was a sunken reef, visible only at low tide during
two or three hours, and quite inaccessible in bad weather. It was the
nearest approach to building a house in the sea that had yet been
attempted! The famous Eddystone stands on a rock which is _never
quite_ under water, although nearly so, for its crest rises a very
little above the highest tides, while the Bell Rock is eight or ten
feet under water at high tides.
It must be clear, therefore, to everyone, that difficulties, unusual
in magnitude and peculiar in kind, must have stood in the way of the
daring engineer who should undertake the erection of a tower on a
rock twelve miles out on the stormy sea, and the foundation of which
was covered with ten or twelve feet of water every tide; a tower
which would have to be built perfectly, yet hastily; a tower which
should form a comfortable home, fit for human beings to dwell in, and
yet strong enough to withstand the utmost fury of the waves, not
merely whirling round it, as might be the case on some exposed
promontory, but rushing at it, straight and fierce from the wild
ocean, in great blue solid billows that should burst in thunder on
its sides, and rush up in scarcely less solid spray to its lantern, a
hundred feet or more above its foundation.
An engineer able and willing to undertake this great work was found
in the person of the late Robert Stevenson of Edinburgh, whose
perseverance and talent shall be commemorated by the grandest and
most useful monument ever raised by man, as long as the Bell Rock
lighthouse shall tower above the sea.
It is not our purpose to go into the details of all that was done in
the construction of this lighthouse. Our peculiar task shall be to
relate those incidents connected with this work which have relation
to the actors in our tale.
We will not, therefore, detain the reader by telling him of all the
preliminary difficulties that were encountered and overcome in this
"Robinson Crusoe" sort of work; how that a temporary floating
lightship, named the _Pharos_, was prepared and anchored in the
vicinity of the rock in order to be a sort of depot and rendezvous
and guide to the three smaller vessels employed in the work, as well
as a light to shipping generally, and a building-yard was established
at Arbroath, where every single stone of the lighthouse was cut and
nicely fitted before being conveyed to the rock. Neither shall we
tell of the difficulties that arose in the matter of getting blocks
of granite large enough for such masonry, and lime of a nature strong
enough to withstand the action of the salt sea. All this, and a great
deal more of a deeply interesting nature, must remain untold, and be
left entirely to the reader's imagination. [Footnote]
[Footnote: It may be found, however, in minute detail, in the large
and interesting work entitled _Steveson's Bell Rock Lighthouse.]
Suffice it to say that the work was fairly begun in the month of
August, 1807; that a strong beacon of timber was built, which was so
well constructed that it stood out all the storms that beat against
it during the whole time of the building operations; that close to
this beacon the pit or foundation of the lighthouse was cut down deep
into the solid rock; that the men employed could work only between
two and three hours at a time, and had to pump the water out of this
pit each tide before they could resume operations; that the work
could only be done in the summer months, and when engaged in it the
men dwelt either in the _Pharos_ floating light, or in one of the
attending vessels, and were not allowed to go ashore--that is, to the
mainland, about twelve miles distant; that the work was hard, but so
novel and exciting that the artificers at last became quite enamoured
of it, and that ere long operations were going busily forward, and
the work was in a prosperous and satisfactory state of advancement.
Things were in this condition at the Bell Rock, when, one fine summer
evening, our friend and hero, Ruby Brand, returned, after a long
absence, to his native town.