Account of the Skerryvore lighthouse : $b with notes on the illumination of lighthousesStevenson, Alan
History
Account of the Skerryvore lighthouse : $b with notes on the illumination of lighthouses
Stevenson, Alan
Skerryvore Lighthouse (Hebrides, Scotland)
be shipped for the Rock, even if there had been no other considerations
leading to the same conclusion. But in addition to all this, I could
not fail to perceive that Hynish was the only place for the permanent
station of the vessel attending on the future Lighthouse; and that on
that account alone the construction of a Harbour there was unavoidable.
That the arrangement, by which the future station for the Tender was
used as the workyard for the operations, was the most judicious that
could have been adopted, was fully proved by my subsequent experience
of the advantage of assembling all our materials and all our force at
a point as near to the Rock as possible, so that we might be at all
times ready to supply defects or omissions, and take advantage of every
favourable change of the sea or sky.
In the middle of March the _Regent_ conveyed from Aberdeen a detachment
of twenty-nine masons and quarriers and five smiths, and the foreman
of the workyard, who, together with the men already at Hynish and the
native labourers, were to be employed during the season of 1839, in
the various departments of the work. On their arrival the men were
separated into two small bands, of which the one, consisting of six
masons, twelve quarriers, one smith and a foreman, was stationed at
North Bay in Mull, where the new quarries were to be opened; while the
other had its head quarters at Hynish, and, when not engaged in the
work on the Rock itself, was subdivided into smaller parties, varying
in number with the nature of the particular operations in which the men
were occupied.
~Granite quarries in Mull.~
On the afternoon of the _19th April_ I sailed from Greenock in the
_Regent_, for North Bay in Mull, where the quarries were to be opened.
We had on board the whole materials of the new Barrack, which was to
supply the place of that which had been destroyed in the preceding
month of November; and we had also a party of carpenters who came to
fit up the Barrack in a temporary manner at North Bay, as a residence
for the masons who were to be engaged in preparing more permanent
dwellings for the quarriers and in forming a landing-wharf for the
shipment of the stones for Tyree. It was not till the 25th, after a
tedious passage of six days, that we anchored at North Bay; and next
morning we had the satisfaction of seeing the steamer, the _Skerryvore_
(by which name she was specially set apart for the service of the
works), arrive in the Bay with a party of masons and quarriers, who had
been appointed to meet us in order to begin the work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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