Account of the Skerryvore lighthouse

by Alan Stevenson

During the numerous occasions on which I had been driven by stress of weather to the neighbouring coasts, I had visited the quarries around Oban and in various parts of Morven and Mull. When so forced to leave what I might more especially call my post, I had an opportunity of seeing the quarries at Ardentallen near Oban, which contain the old red sandstone strongly impregnated with clay. That stone is by no means suitable for the face-work of a marine building, in such a situation as the Skerryvore; while the comparatively small quantity of hearting which could be admitted into such a work, made it inexpedient to seek such materials at so great a distance. In this way, the Ardentallen quarry seemed completely excluded from the field. At another time, in passing through Inverary, I devoted a day to the examination of the quarries which had lately been opened at that place and in which a beautiful porphyry is wrought; but I saw no appearance of very large blocks, or, at all events, nothing that could favour the expectation of a considerable supply. But after carefully weighing the matter, the great masses of granite at the Ross of Mull finally determined my choice in favour of that locality; and the Duke of Argyll having, with the greatest liberality, ratified his predecessor’s grant of liberty to the Lighthouse Board to quarry stones from any part of the Argyll estates, it was resolved to take measures early in the spring of 1839 for opening quarries at North Bay, in Mull, where an excellent station for shipping had been discovered, close to the place where we saw the most promising appearance of rock. This measure seemed the more indispensable, as the last part of the quarry terred[18] or laid bare at Hynish, had greatly disappointed our expectations. The unworkable nature of gneiss rock also and its extreme uncertainty with regard to quality, farther concurred to make a change most desirable. Granite, indeed, is a material in many respects superior to sandstone, gneiss, or porphyry. The first it greatly excels in durability and weight; and, as a stone for the workyard, it is superior to the other two, from its property of being fissile, or easily split in any direction. In this respect it resembles certain parts of some sandstone strata which are commonly called liver rock, of which Craigleith quarry, near Edinburgh, furnishes an excellent example. Porphyry, and, I think, all other igneous rocks (excepting granite), gneiss also, and most of the other primary rocks, have not this property, being fissile only in one plane, so that quarries of those rocks generally turn out very uncouth or irregular stones, which, though they may in some favourable cases possess good natural beds, will always be found to have ragged and irregular joints, which, for the most part, are incapable of being properly dressed.

[18] This term in Scotland denotes the removal of the soil and unsolid material, in order to lay bare the rock previous to working the quarry, and seems obviously to be derived from the Latin “terra,” perhaps through the medium of some old charter. The quantity of terring very much affects the profitable working of a quarry.

CHAPTER V.
OPERATIONS OF 1839.

During the winter months which intervened between November 1838 and March 1839, a small detachment of men, consisting of three masons, nine quarriers, and one smith, were left at Hynish under the superintendence of Mr Charles Barclay, to clear the landing-place of several patches of rock which encumbered the entrance. Shipping Station and Pier at Hynish. They were also to build some walls of inclosure, and to quarry and dress stones for the pier and other buildings at Hynish. The provision of accommodation for shipping at that place was now naturally regarded as of more urgent necessity than formerly, because the importation of stones from Mull, which the failure of the Tyree stone had rendered unavoidable, led to the necessity of a reshipment of all the materials at Hynish, where they were dressed before being sent to the Rock. It may, perhaps, be naturally enough imagined, that instead of importing the materials to be dressed at Tyree and there reshipped in order to be carried to the Rock, they might have been prepared in Mull, and sent directly to the Skerryvore; but many things concurred to render this inexpedient, if not altogether impracticable. The advantage of being able, by means of a good telescope, in some measure to ascertain the state of the sea at the Rock, the comparative shortness of the passage, which gave the prospect of several cargoes being landed on it in one day during fine weather, and the convenience of communicating with the Rock by signal, were circumstances in themselves quite sufficient to determine my choice in favour of Hynish, as the place from which the materials must be shipped for the Rock, even if there had been no other considerations leading to the same conclusion. But in addition to all this, I could not fail to perceive that Hynish was the only place for the permanent station of the vessel attending on the future Lighthouse; and that on that account alone the construction of a Harbour there was unavoidable. That the arrangement, by which the future station for the Tender was used as the workyard for the operations, was the most judicious that could have been adopted, was fully proved by my subsequent experience of the advantage of assembling all our materials and all our force at a point as near to the Rock as possible, so that we might be at all times ready to supply defects or omissions, and take advantage of every favourable change of the sea or sky.

In the middle of March the Regent conveyed from Aberdeen a detachment of twenty-nine masons and quarriers and five smiths, and the foreman of the workyard, who, together with the men already at Hynish and the native labourers, were to be employed during the season of 1839, in the various departments of the work. On their arrival the men were separated into two small bands, of which the one, consisting of six masons, twelve quarriers, one smith and a foreman, was stationed at North Bay in Mull, where the new quarries were to be opened; while the other had its head quarters at Hynish, and, when not engaged in the work on the Rock itself, was subdivided into smaller parties, varying in number with the nature of the particular operations in which the men were occupied.

On the afternoon of the 19th April I sailed from Greenock in the Regent, for North Bay in Mull, Granite quarries in Mull. where the quarries were to be opened. We had on board the whole materials of the new Barrack, which was to supply the place of that which had been destroyed in the preceding month of November; and we had also a party of carpenters who came to fit up the Barrack in a temporary manner at North Bay, as a residence for the masons who were to be engaged in preparing more permanent dwellings for the quarriers and in forming a landing-wharf for the shipment of the stones for Tyree. It was not till the 25th, after a tedious passage of six days, that we anchored at North Bay; and next morning we had the satisfaction of seeing the steamer, the Skerryvore (by which name she was specially set apart for the service of the works), arrive in the Bay with a party of masons and quarriers, who had been appointed to meet us in order to begin the work.

The necessary arrangements with the Duke of Argyll’s tenants at the Ross of Mull (in which district North Bay is situated) having been already made, no time was lost in erecting the wooden Barrack; and, in seven days after our arrival, the masons and quarriers entered their new habitation under the charge of Mr Charles Stewart, whom I left as foreman of the North Bay works. Mr Stewart and his party, following the example of diligence thus set to them, were not less expeditious in proceeding with the work which had been assigned to them; and by the beginning of August a range of barracks, capable of accommodating forty persons, had been erected, a landing wharf had been built, and various storehouses had been provided, although the quarry had to be opened, and the blocks of stone required for those various works were still in situ at the time of our landing at North Bay three months before.

The landing wharf is placed on a small projecting face of rock in a depth of 12 feet at high water of ordinary spring tides. It presents a face of 40 feet in length, and was provided with wooden fenders for the protection of the vessels loading stones. Landward of it a considerable space was levelled, by cutting and filling, to serve as a yard for storing the quarried materials, so as to be ready for shipment. The quarry itself was opened in the face of a hill, so steep as almost to deserve the name of a cliff; but advantage was taken of a deep gully which intersected it and in it an inclined plane was formed communicating directly with the landing-place. This gully was partly cleared by excavation of the rock and partly, where necessary, its inequalities were smoothed down by filling it with stone shivers; and along its bed thus prepared, longitudinal sleepers of timber were laid, to which edge-rails were attached.

At the top of the incline two iron drums or barrels were set, and round them were wound, in opposite directions, the chains by which the trucks or wagons, loaded with stones from the quarry, were lowered to the wharf below. A powerful break apparatus was attached to those barrels, to check the velocity of the descending wagons, which was also in part counteracted, by making their gravity act as a power to raise the empty wagons in the same manner as is usually practised in coal-mines.