“Its dimensions are well known; but no description can give the idea of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen miles from Arbraeth (Aberbrathock), the nearest shore. The fitting up within is not only handsome, but elegant. All work of wood (almost) is wainscot; all hammer-work brass; in short, exquisitely fitted up. You enter by a ladder of rope, with wooden steps, about thirty feet from the bottom where the mason-work ceases to be solid, and admits of round apartments. The lowest is a storehouse for the people’s provisions, water, etc.; above that, a storehouse for the lights, oil, etc.; then the kitchen of the people, three in number; then their sleeping chamber; then the saloon or parlor, a neat little room; above all the Light-house; all communicating by oaken ladders with brass rails, most handsomely and conveniently executed.”
In the course of the voyage Mr. Stevenson determined that his “constituents” should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor (Skerrymore), where he thought it would be essential to have a Light-house. Sir Walter’s description of this visit is quite amusing and perhaps you would like to read it. The wind had blown squally all night, and in consequence everything and everybody were pitched and tossed about at a great rate, on board the little vessel. Nobody relished the attempt to land under these circumstances on this wild ridge.
“Quiet perseverance on the part of Mr. Stevenson, and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the Yacht, which seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the Commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, comes in sight this long ridge of rocks (chiefly under water) on which the tide breaks in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low, broad rocks at one end of the reef, which is about a mile in length. These are never entirely under water though the surf dashes over them. Pull through a very heavy swell with great difficulty, and approach a tremendous surf dashing over black pointed rocks—contrive to land well wetted. We took possession of the rock in the name of the Commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr. S. It will be a most desolate position for a Light-house—the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at fourteen miles distance. So much for the Skerry Vhor.”
LIGHT-HOUSE AT “THE THIMBLE SHOAL,” HAMPTON ROADS, VA.
As might have been expected, the Commissioners were discouraged at the aspect of affairs and delayed the work from year to year, but at last, in 1834, the Board placed this serious undertaking in the hands of Mr. Alan Stevenson.
Mr. Stevenson has left us a thrilling account of his noble work on Skerrymore Rocks, than which no worthier monument was ever left behind to the memory of a gifted and conscientious man.
In the first place he had to build barracks for his workmen on the Isles of Tyree and Mull, and then to begin the foundation of the tower on the only one of the gneiss rocks of the reef which was broad enough for the purpose, and this is but barely so, for at high water little remains around the tower’s base but a narrow band of a few feet of rugged rocks, washed into gullies by the sea, which plays through them almost incessantly.
Everything had to be thought of and provided for beforehand; even so small a matter as the want of a little clay for tamping holes might have stopped the work for a time.