The floating-light’s bell rung this morning at half-past 4 o’clock, as a signal for the boats to be got ready, and the landing took place at half-past 5. In passing the Smeaton, at her moorings near the rock, her boat followed with eight additional artificers who had come from Arbroath with her at last trip, but there being no room for them in the floating-light’s boats, they had continued on board. The weather did not look very promising in the morning, the wind blowing pretty fresh from W.SW.; and had it not been that the writer calculated upon having a vessel so much at command, in all probability he would not have ventured to land. The Smeaton rode at what sailors call a _salvagee_, with a cross-head made fast to the floating-buoy. This kind of attachment was found to be more convenient, than the mode of passing the hawser through the ring of the buoy, when the vessel was to be made fast. She had then only to be steered very close to the buoy, when the salvagee was laid hold of with a boat-hook, and the _bite_ of the hawser thrown over the cross-head, instead of being obliged to put out the boat, in order to pass the rope through the ring of the buoy. But the salvagee, by this method, was always left at the buoy, and was, of course, more liable to chaff and wear than a hawser passed through the ring, which could be wattled with canvas, and shifted at pleasure. The salvagee and cross method is, however, much practised; but the experience of this morning showed it to be very unsuitable for vessels riding in an exposed situation, for any length of time. [Sidenote: Smeaton breaks adrift from her moorings.] Soon after the artificers landed, they commenced work; but the wind coming to blow hard, the Smeaton’s boat and crew, who had brought their complement of eight men to the rock, went off to examine her riding ropes, and see that they were in proper order. The boat had no sooner reached the vessel than she went adrift, carrying the boat along with her, and both had even got to a considerable distance before this situation of things was observed, every one being so intent upon his own particular duty, that the boat had not been seen leaving the rock. As it blew hard, the crew with much difficulty set the mainsail upon the Smeaton, with a view to work her up to the buoy, and again lay hold of the moorings. By the time that she was got round to make a tack towards the rock, she had drifted at least three miles to leeward, with the praam-boat astern; and having both the wind and a tide against her, the writer perceived, with no little anxiety, that she could not possibly return to the rock till long after its being overflowed; for, owing to the anomaly of the tides formerly noticed, the Bell Rock is completely under water before the ebb abates to the offing. [Sidenote: Perilous situation of those left on the Rock.]