On the 9th of August a strong gale suddenly sprang up from the S.W., which, while it lasted, caused us much alarm and anxiety at Hynish, whither we had been driven from our station at the Rock to seek shelter at the commencement of the storm. Several small pieces of timber, which we had left on the Rock when we were forced to leave it, came ashore in Balaphuil Bay; and it was generally reported in the Island that the Barrack had, for the second time, been destroyed. That report I did not credit, as I had great confidence in the fixtures which attached it to the Rock; but my anxiety to ascertain the true state of the case, led me to examine the south-eastern shore of Tyree, when all that could be discovered was a few pieces of loose timber, and one of the smith’s cooling tubs, which had been washed from the Rock. Next day, however, the smith’s bellows came ashore in the same Bay, and so little injured, that we had them repaired and put in use again on the Rock. On the 12th of August, when the weather permitted us to return to our station at the Skerryvore, we found all the timbers which had been lashed down with chains to the Rock scattered in every direction around the beams of the Barrack, the smith’s forge overturned, the bellows of course gone; one of the cranes also which had been used for the removal of the excavated materials had been swept away, and not a vestige of it left, except a small piece of one of the wooden stays, which the force of the waves had broken. But that which most of all surprised us, and gave us the greatest concern, as an alarming proof of the force of the sea and a source of great inconvenience and hazard during the rest of the season, was the disappearance of our moorings, which had been lost by the _foundering_ of the cask buoy in the heavy surf which the gale had raised. During all the rest of our stay at the Rock that season, we were forced to ride at anchor in foul rocky ground of the worst and most irregular description, over which the vessel frequently drifted to a considerable distance, occasioning us no small fear for our safety. That was the second set of moorings which had disappeared at Skerryvore; and a stronger proof of the very great power of the western swell can hardly be imagined, as nothing of the kind had happened during the whole time the Bell Rock works were in progress. That circumstance also convinced us of the necessity of adopting vessels of small burden for landing the materials. So great, indeed, was the difficulty of _hanging_ even the boats at the Rock, that on two occasions (on the nights of the 4th May and 12th July) we had both the boats half filled by the sea, and nine or ten men thrown out on the Rock by the _kanting_ of one of the boats at the recoil of the wave. The landing department was indeed, throughout the whole season, attended with great difficulty, and was to me a source of constant anxiety; for, in the daily transport to and from the vessel