The extent of work done during the season of 1841 at the Rock, must in a great measure be attributed to the advantage of steam attendance, without which numerous favourable opportunities of landing materials must necessarily have been lost, from the uncertainty which pervades all the movements of sailing craft. The number of lighters towed out and discharged at the Rock was 120; and it is remarkable that no accident of importance occurred, although many risks were run, from the breaking of warps while the craft lay moored to the landing quay during heavy seas. I cannot omit in this place to record my sense of the services rendered to the works by the late Mr James Heddle, who commanded the steamer and who died from some consumptive disease soon after the close of the season’s operations. Mr Heddle’s health had been somewhat enfeebled towards the latter part of the autumn; and his excessive exertions and continued exposure during his arduous service, in some measure, I fear, hastened the crisis of his disease, which at length terminated suddenly by the rupture of an abscess in the lungs. Of his anxiety to forward the work, and his unwearied exertion in the discharge of his harassing duty at Skerryvore, which frequently allowed him less than twenty hours sleep in a week, I cannot speak too highly, as I consider his intrepidity and zeal to have been one of the most efficient causes of our success ever since the commencement of the works on the Rock in 1839. Mr Heddle possessed attainments superior to those generally found among persons in his walk of life and was in every respect a most estimable man. CHAPTER VIII. OPERATIONS OF 1842. ~State of the Rock in Spring of 1842.~