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 shipping belonging to the Light-house service, besides attending
boats, for visiting Light-houses on insulated situations, consists
of a vessel of about 50 tons register, which is chiefly employed in
attending the Bell Rock, to supply the house with necessaries, and
relieve the light-keepers in their turn. For general service, another
vessel of 140 tons is kept, which carries oil and other stores for
the lights, together with fuel and necessaries, for the use of the
light-keepers, and artificers, with their implements and apparatus,
for making repairs at the different stations. The Engineer makes his
annual voyage of inspection in this vessel, which is provided with
cabins suitable for the reception of such of the Commissioners as may
occasionally visit the Light-houses.
[Sidenote: Voyages of Inspection.]
This duty has been undertaken by various members of the Board. In
the Summer of 1814 a Committee, consisting of Mr Hamilton, Sheriff
of Lanarkshire, Mr Erskine, Sheriff of Orkney, and Mr Duff, Sheriff
of Forfarshire, with the Engineer, made a voyage to inspect the
different Light-houses already erected, as also the most prominent of
the stations on the coast, suggested for the erection of Additional
Lights. They sailed from Leith in the Yacht, having for their companion
Mr Walter Scott, and having visited the Light-houses on the Isle of
May and Bell Rock, with the establishment at Arbroath, and that upon
Kinnaird-Head in Aberdeenshire, they next landed at Sumburgh-head in
Shetland, on which a Light-house has since been erected. Returning
southward, they visited the Light-houses on the Start Point of Sanday,
and the Pentland Skerries in Orkney. Then steering westward, they
landed at Cape Wrath, one of the projected Stations for a Light-house.
They next touched at the Light-house on Island-Glass, one of the Harris
Isles. From thence they proceeded and landed upon the Rock called
Skerryvore, lying off the Island of Tiree, and were satisfied of the
practicability of erecting a Light-house there. Having visited the
Light-house on Ennistrahul, on the coast of Donegal, one of the Irish
Lights, and inspected their own establishments on the Mull of Kantire
and Isle of Pladda, the Commissioners landed at Greenock, after a
voyage of nearly seven weeks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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