At Arbroath, as at other stations, the light-keeper‘ dwellings are very neatly built and comfortably arranged, each having its little garden attached. There are also suitable storehouses provided, a room for the master and crew of the lighthouse tender, and a signal-tower fifty feet high, on whose summit a small observatory is erected, with an excellent achromatic telescope, a flag-staff, and a copper signal-ball measuring eighteen feet in diameter. A similar ball crowns the lighthouse dome, and by these means daily signals are exchanged, to signify that all is well. Should the ball at the top be allowed to remain down, as is the case when particular supplies are needed, or either of the light-keepers have been seized with illness, assistance is immediately dispatched in the tender. The total cost of the lighthouse, of the buildings at Arbroath, of the tender, and the first year’s stores, was £61,350. A curious accident is recorded in connection with the lighthouse as having occurred on the 9th of February 1832, about ten o’clock P.M. A large herring-gull flew against one of the south-eastern mullions of the light-room with so much violence that two of the polished plates of glass, measuring each about two feet square and a quarter of an inch thick, were dashed to atoms, and scattered over the floor, to the great alarm of the keeper on watch, and of his two associates, who rushed instantly into the light-room. It happened, fortunately, that although one of the red-shaded sides of the reflector-frame was passing in its revolution at the moment, the fragments were so minute that no injury was done to the valuable red glass. The gull was found to measure five feet from tip to tip of its expanded wings. A large herring was found in its gullet, and in its throat a piece of plate glass about an inch in length.[40] [40] “Smeaton and Lighthouses,” p. 97. Before quitting the subject of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, it is desirable we should refer to another of Mr. Stevenson’s achievements, the Beacon on the Carr rock. The Carr is the seaward extremity of a sunken reef, visible only at low water, which extends about two miles from the shore of Fifeness, on the northern side of the mouth of the Forth estuary. Its position is unusually dangerous, as it lies in the track of shipping ascending and descending Scotland’s great eastern river. In the course of nine years it proved fatal to no fewer than sixteen vessels. As all attempts had failed to mark its position by a floating buoy, the authorities resolved to erect a beacon of masonry upon it, and in 1813 the difficult work was commenced under Mr. Stevenson’s direction. The dimensions of the Carr are only 23 feet in breadth by 15 feet in length, and it was impossible, therefore, to obtain a base for a building of greater diameter than 18 feet.