An Account of the Bell Rock Light-House: Including the Details of the Erection and Peculiar Structure of That Edifice; to Which Is Prefixed a Historical View of the Institution and Progress of the Northern Light-HousesStevenson, Robert
History
An Account of the Bell Rock Light-House: Including the Details of the Erection and Peculiar Structure of That Edifice; to Which Is Prefixed a Historical View of the Institution and Progress of the Northern Light-Houses
Stevenson, Robert
Bell Rock Lighthouse (Scotland); Lighthouses -- Scotland
The experience of this day’s hard passage to the floating-light
strongly impressed the writer with the inconveniency and danger
arising from the want of a proper tender, which could be cast loose
at pleasure, and brought to the lee-side of the rock, and could, at
all times, be moored nearer than it would have been safe or proper to
have risked a vessel of the description of the floating-light. Another
circumstance, no less deeply interesting to the safety of those on the
rock, was the erection of the beacon-house, as a place of refuge in
cases like the present. Here the writer could not help congratulating
himself not only upon the near prospect of completing this work, but
also on the perseverance with which he had maintained the indispensable
necessity of the erection of the beacon. He was aware of the well
grounded fears for the safety of all concerned, in the event of its
being washed away by the sea; but, without such an erection on the Bell
Rock, it is impossible to describe the continual hazard which must have
attended the undertaking, or to determine the period when works so
peculiarly situate, and especially so low in the water, might have been
brought to a conclusion.
[Sidenote: Thursday, 3d.]
[Sidenote: Eighteen of the artificers decline embarking for the rock.]
[Sidenote: The boats proceed with eight.]
The bell rung this morning at 5 o’clock, but the writer must
acknowledge, from the circumstances of yesterday, that its sound was
extremely unwelcome. This appears also to have been the feelings of the
artificers, for when they came to be mustered, out of twenty-six, only
eight, besides the foreman and seamen, appeared upon deck, to accompany
the writer to the rock. Such are the baneful effects of any thing like
misfortune or accident connected with a work of this description. The
use of argument to persuade the men to embark, in cases of this kind,
would have been out of place, as it is not only discomfort, or even
the risk of the loss of a limb, but life itself, that becomes the
question. The boats, notwithstanding the thinness of our ranks, left
the vessel at half-past 5. The rough weather of yesterday having proved
but a summer’s gale, the wind came to-day in gentle breezes, yet the
atmosphere being cloudy, it had not a very favourable appearance. The
boats reached the rock at 6 A. M., and the eight artificers who landed,
were employed in clearing out the bat-holes for the beacon-house, and
had a very prosperous tide of four hours work, being the longest yet
experienced by half an hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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