THE SKERRYVORE LIGHTHOUSE.
The full details which we have given of the erection of the Bell Rock
Lighthouse will render unnecessary any elaborate account of the mode of
construction of later edifices. There are some, however, which we are
unwilling to pass over without at least a cursory notice, owing either
to their romantic position or to their special interest as examples of
engineering skill. One of the most important of these is the Lighthouse
of the Skerryvore, situated on a reef which, in all leading features,
is a counterpart of the Bell Rock. It is placed in the same parallel
of latitude, and occupies the identical position on the west coast of
Scotland which the latter occupies on the eastern. Nor was it of old
less fatal or less ominous to the mariner, but annually exacted its
tribute of precious lives and wrecked vessels. A few minutes sufficed
for the total loss of any unfortunate ship which dashed against the
gneiss crags of the Skerryvore, and its rent and shattered timbers were
quickly carried by the tide to the fishermen of the island of Tyree.
Not that this formidable memorial of past volcanic convulsions was
totally submerged—some of its higher points rose above the level of the
highest tides: but the extent of its foundations was considerable; and
even in the summer season latent dangers beset the difficult channel
between its eastern extremity and the island of Tyree, which lies about
eleven miles distant.[44]
[44] Alan Stevenson, “Account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse” (ed. 1848),
p. 41.
For various reasons the attention of the Commissioners of Northern
Lights had been early directed to this formidable reef; and in
1814 they had determined to mark its locality by the erection of a
lighthouse. It was visited in this same year by some of the members of
the Commission, accompanied by one whose name alone is sufficient to
render the visit ever memorable—Sir Walter Scott. He was much struck
with the desolateness of the situation, which he thought infinitely
surpassed that of the Bell Rock or the Eddystone.
Owing, perhaps, to the difficulty of the enterprise, it was deferred
until the autumn of 1834, when Mr. Alan Stevenson was authorized to
commence a preliminary inspection, which he did not complete until
1835. This difficulty proceeded not only from the position, but from
the nature of the reef itself.
It is true that the distance from the mainland was three miles less in
the case of Skerryvore than in that of the Bell Rock; but the barren
and over-populated island of Tyree did not offer the resources of the
eastern coast, nor a safe and commodious port like that of Arbroath.
The engineers were therefore compelled to erect, at the nearest and
most favourable point of Tyree, a quay and a small harbour, with
temporary cabins for the workmen, and storehouses of every kind; all
whose materials, excepting only stone—and even the supply of _that_
failed after awhile—required to be transported from distant parts.
The first and most embarrassing, perhaps, of the numerous questions
which present themselves to the engineer when entering upon the
construction of a lighthouse, are those of the _height_ and the _mass_.
In the days of Smeaton, when the best light in use was that of common
candles, the elevation beyond a certain point could not be of any
utility; while in 1835 the application of the reflector and the lens,
by assisting in the extension and diffusion of the light, rendered, on
the contrary, a considerable elevation both necessary and desirable.
It was therefore decided that the height of the Skerryvore should be
135 feet above the highest tides, so as to command a horizon visible
for a radius of eighteen miles. The diameter of the base was fixed at
42 feet, and that of the topmost story at 16 feet; consequently the
masonry of the tower would be double that of the Bell Rock, and four
and a half times that of the Eddystone.
Another peculiarity distinguishes the Skerryvore from the Bell Rock.
The sandstone of the latter is wave-worn, and broken up into a thousand
rugged inequalities: the action of the sea on the igneous formation of
the Skerryvore has, on the contrary, communicated to it the appearance
and polish of a mass of dark-coloured crystal. It is so compact and
smooth that the foreman of the masons, when he landed on it, said it
was like climbing up the neck of a bottle. Moreover, notwithstanding
its durability, the gneiss of Skerryvore is excavated into caverns,
which considerably limit the area adapted for building operations.
One of these caverns, we are told, terminates in a narrow spherical
chamber, with an upper opening; through which, from time to time,
springs a bright, luminous shaft of water, 20 feet high, and white as
snow, except when the sun wreathes it with a thousand rainbows.
* * * * *
Mr. Alan Stevenson commenced actual operations in 1838 by the erection
of a provisional barrack on piles, at such a height as to be beyond
the reach of all average tides. This was designed to shelter the men
at night, saving them the voyage to and from the mainland; and also
to accommodate them when their work was suspended by bad weather. The
first erection was swept away in a great gale on the night of November
3; but happily the labours of the season were then ended, and there
were no occupants. On this occasion the grindstone was deposited in a
hole 36 feet deep; the iron anvil was transported 13 yards from the
place where it had been left; the iron stanchions were bent and twisted
like corkscrews; and, finally, a stone weighing half a hundred-weight,
lying at the bottom of an excavation, was carried to the highest
surface of the rock.
* * * * *
Conquering all feelings of discouragement, Mr. Stevenson, in the
following year, renewed his operations. A second barrack was completed
by the 3rd of September. It was built of timber, and consisted of three
stories: the first was appropriated as a kitchen; the second divided
into two cabins, one for the engineer and one for the master of the
works; and the third belonged to the thirty workmen engaged in the
erection of the lighthouse.
A more remarkable habitation than this was never dwelt in by human
beings. It was an oasis in a wide waste of waters—a rude asylum
suspended between sea and sky. Perched forty feet above the wave-beaten
crag, Mr. Stevenson, with a goodly company of thirty men, in this
singular abode, spent many a weary day and night at those times
when the sea prevented a descent 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.
* * * * *
In the erection of the lighthouse itself, the first important
operation, and one which occupied the whole of the season of 1839—from
the 6th of May to the 30th of September—was the excavation of a
suitable foundation. When building the Eddystone, Mr. Smeaton had
been compelled to take into consideration the peculiar structure of
the rock, and to adapt his lower courses of masonry, as we have seen,
to a series of gradually ascending terraces formed by the successive
ledges of the rock itself. This difficult and expensive process was
rendered unnecessary by the geodesical formation of the Skerryvore. Mr.
Stevenson, therefore, began work by hollowing out a base of forty feet
diameter—the largest area he could obtain without any change of level.
This portion of his enterprise occupied twenty men for two hundred and
seventeen days; two hundred and ninety-six charges of gunpowder were
made use of; and two thousand tons of débris and refuse were cast into
the sea. The mining or blasting operations were not carried on without
great difficulty, on account of the absence of any shelter for the
miners, who were unable to retire more than ten or twelve paces, at
the furthest, from the spot where the charge was fired. The quantities
of gunpowder, therefore, were measured with the utmost nicety; a few
grains too many, and the whole company of engineers and workmen would
have been blown into the air. Mr. Stevenson himself generally fired the
train, or it was done under his superintendence and in his presence;
and from the precautions suggested by his skill and prudence, happily
no accident occurred.
During the first month of their residence in the barrack, he informs
us[45] that he and his men suffered much inconvenience from the
inundation of their apartments. On one occasion, moreover, they were
a fortnight without receiving any communication from the mainland, or
from the steam-tug attached to the works; and during the greater part
of this time they saw nothing but white plains of foam spreading as
far as the eye could reach, and the only sounds were the whistling
of the wind and the thunderous roar of the billows, which ever and
anon swelled into such a tumult that it was almost impossible to
hear one another speak. We may well conceive that a scene so awful,
with the ruins of their first barrack lying within a few feet of
them, was calculated to fill their minds with the most discouraging
apprehensions. Mr. Stevenson records, in simple but graphic language,
the indefinite sensations of terror with which he was aroused one night
when a tremendous wave broke against the timber structure, and all the
occupants of the chamber beneath him involuntarily uttered a terrible
cry. They sprang from their beds in the conviction that the whole
building had been precipitated to the depths of ocean.
[45] A. Stevenson, “Account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse,” p. 143.
Up to the 20th of June no materials had been landed on the rock but
iron and timber; next arrived the great stones, all ready cut and hewn,
and weighing not less than eight hundred tons. But the disembarkation
of these very essential supplies entailed serious risks, which were
renewed with every block, for the loss of a single one would have
delayed the works. At length the foundation-stone was fixed in its
place; the Duke of Argyle presiding over the ceremony, accompanied by
his duchess, his daughter, and a numerous retinue.
* * * * *
The summer of 1840 was a summer of tempests. Nevertheless, in the midst
of incessant fears, and dangers, and wearying accidents, and every
kind of privation, the devoted band of workers prosecuted their noble
enterprise; and such, says Mr. Stevenson, was their profound sense of
duty—such the desire of every one that full and complete success should
crown their efforts—that not a man expressed a wish to retreat from the
battle-field where he was exposed to so many enemies.
[Illustration: SKERRYVORE LIGHTHOUSE.]
The day’s occupations were thus divided. At half-past three in the
morning they were awakened, and from four o’clock to eight they
laboured without a pause; at eight they were allowed half an hour
for dinner. Work was then resumed, and continued for seven or eight,
or, if it were very urgent, even for nine hours. Next came supper,
which was eaten leisurely and comfortably in the cool of the evening.
This prolonged toil produced a continual sleepiness, so that those
who stood still for any time invariably fell off into a profound
slumber; which, adds Mr. Stevenson, frequently happened to himself
during breakfast and dinner. Several times, also, he woke up, pen
in hand, with a word begun on the page of his diary. Life, however,
on the desert rock of the Skerryvore seems not to have been without
its peculiar pleasures. The grandeur of ocean’s angry outbursts—the
hoarse murmur of the waters—the shrill harsh cries of the sea-birds
who incessantly hovered round them—the splendour of a sea polished
like a mirror—the glory of a cloudless sky—the solemn silence of azure
nights, sometimes sown thick with stars, sometimes illuminated by the
full moon,—were scenes of a panorama as novel as it was wonderful, and
which could not fail to awaken thought even in the dullest and most
indifferent minds. Consider, too—when we think of Mr. Stevenson and his
devoted company—the continual emotions which they experienced of hope
and anxiety; the necessity, on the part of their leader, of incessant
watchfulness, and of readiness of resource to grapple with every
difficulty; the gratification with which each man regarded the gradual
growth, under his laborious hands, of a noble and beneficent work; and
we think the reader will admit that life upon the Skerryvore, if it had
its troubles and its perils, was not without its rewards and happiness.
* * * * *
In July 1841 the masonry had been carried to an elevation which
rendered impossible the further employment of the stationary crane. As
a substitute the balance crane was introduced—that beautiful machine,
invented at the Bell Rock, which rises simultaneously with the edifice
it assists to raise.
Thanks to this new auxiliary, the mass of masonry completed in the
season of 1841 amounted to 30,000 cubic feet, more than double the mass
of the Eddystone, and exceeding that of the Bell Rock lighthouse. Such
was the delicate precision observed in the previous shaping and fitting
of the stones, that after they had been regularly fixed in their
respective places, the diameter of each course did not vary one-sixth
of an inch from the prescribed dimensions, and the height was only one
inch more than had been determined by the architect in his previous
calculations.
On the 21st of July, the steamer saluted with its one gun the
disembarkation of the last cargo of stones intended for the lighthouse.
On the 10th of August the lantern arrived, which was hauled up to its
position, and duly fixed; a temporary shelter from the weather being
also erected for it.
The summer of 1843 was devoted to pointing the external masonry—a
wearisome operation, conducted by means of suspended scaffolds—and to
the completion of the internal arrangements. And at length, on the 1st
of February 1844, the welcome light of the Skerryvore pharos blazed
across the waters of the stormy sea.
The illuminating apparatus adopted was the dioptric, and identical in
all respects with the apparatus supplied a few years before to the
Tower of Cordova. It is a revolving light, whose full brilliancy is
apparent only once in a minute. Elevated 150 feet above the sea level,
it is visible at a distance of eighteen miles.
* * * * *
Such is the stirring history of the Skerryvore lighthouse. The reader
will think, perhaps, that it differs but little from that of the Bell
Rock and the Eddystone. Nevertheless we could not pass over it in
silence, for it completed a work which may fitly be called “the art of
building lighthouses in the open sea”—an art entirely unknown before
the days of Smeaton, and Robert and Alan Stevenson—three men of whom
Ocean, if it could translate into words the “rhythmical smile” of its
summer calm, or the harsher accents of its equinoctial wrath, might say
with the poet,—
“Great I must call them, for they conquered me!”
[Illustration]