In the year 1793, when Admiral Cochrane addressed his letter to the Light-house Board, its surplus funds amounted only to a few hundred pounds; a sum so inadequate to meet the necessary expenditure of such a work, that the Commissioners judged it better for the interests of navigation, to go forward with the less expensive improvements on other parts of the coast, aware that nothing essential could be undertaken at the Bell Rock without the effectual aid of Government. In this state, matters were allowed to rest till the great storm in December 1799, already noticed, which roused the public mind to fresh speculations about the necessity of some erection being made upon the Bell Rock; not merely as a local improvement, but as one essentially calculated to benefit the ships navigating the German Ocean, by opening the Firth of Forth more effectually as a place of safety in easterly storms, so that the Bell Rock, in place of being the dread of mariners, might in future become a point from which they would take their departure, and for which they might steer in sailing for the coast. Nautical and commercial men, especially, were interested, and felt this state of things in its fullest extent. Remarks were accordingly made in several of the periodical publications of the day, calling the attention of the public to the erection of a light-house there, as a subject of national importance. In order to advance this object, the Corporation of the Trinity-House of Leith, made public advertisements, calling on persons likely to produce some practical plan that might lead to the means of making the erection in question. This, of course, produced various propositions on the subject. _Designs for the Bell Rock Light-house._ [Sidenote: Designs by Captain Brodie and Mr Couper.]