By the middle of the month of May sufficient materials were collected for commencing the building. The workmen having expressed a wish to have the foundation-stone of the beacon laid with masonic ceremony, preparations were accordingly made. ‘The year of our Lord 1802’ was cut upon the foundation-stone, in which a hole was perforated for depositing a glass phial containing a small parchment-scroll, setting forth the intention of the building, the official constitution of the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, and the name of their engineer. It also contained several of the current coins of George III. in gold, silver, and copper. The day fixed for the ceremony was the 15th of May. The weather was dry and tolerably agreeable, though cold with snow upon the ground; the thermometer stood at 35° in the shade at noon. The influx of so many strangers to the island for this work, and the novelty of the intended ceremony, caused most of the inhabitants to be present to witness it. Every thing being prepared, the engineer, assisted by the foreman of the works, applied the square and plummet-level to the foundation-stone in compliance with ancient custom. The phial was then deposited in the cavity prepared for it in the stone, and carefully covered up with sand, when the masonic ceremony was concluded in the usual manner. The Rev. Walter Traill, minister of the parish, then offered up a most impressive prayer, imploring the blessing of heaven upon the intended purposes of the building, and then delivered the following address:—
‘This moment is auspicious. The foundation-stone is laid of a building of incalculable value;—a work of use, not of luxury. Pyramids were erected by the pride of kings, to perpetuate the memory of men, whose ambition enslaved and desolated the world. But it is the benevolent intention of our government, on this spot, to erect a tower—not to exhaust, but to increase the wealth and protect the commerce of this happy kingdom. To the goodness of God, in the first place, we are indebted for a degree of prosperity unknown to other nations. In the next place, we owe our happiness to our insular situation, and attention to maritime affairs. Faction and civil war have at this period laid waste the fairest countries of Europe; while peace has flourished within our walls. Agriculture, commerce, and their kindred arts, have prospered in our land. British oak hath triumphed; victory hath been attached to the British flag; and British fleets have ridden triumphant on the wings of the wind. Consider the great national objects for which this building will be erected. To protect commerce, and to guard the lives of those intrepid men who for us cheerfully brave the fury of the waves and the rage of battle. The mariner when he returns to the embraces of his wife and children, after ascribing praise to the Great Giver of safety, shall bless the friendly light which guided him over the deep, and recommend to the protection of heaven those who urged, who planned, and who executed the work. This day shall be remembered with gratitude. It shall be recorded, that at the beginning of a new century the pious care of government was extended to this remote island. These rocks, so fatal to the most brave and honourable part of the community, shall lose their terror, and safety and life shall spring from danger and death. Even you, my friends, who are employed in the execution of this work, are objects of regard and gratitude. You have, for a season, left the society of your families and friends, to perform a work of high interest to your country and to mankind. I am confident that you will act, in all respects, so as to deserve and obtain the esteem of the people who now surround you. I hope that they will discharge to you every duty of Christian hospitality, and that you will have no occasion to feel that you are strangers in a strange land. It becomes us to remember that all the affairs of men are dependent on Providence. We may exert talents and industry, but God only can bless our exertions with success. Let our trust be in Him. Let us humbly hope that He will bless this day and this undertaking. Through His aid may there arise from this spot a tower of safety and protection to the mariner of every tongue and nation.’
The whole of this scene is described as being very impressive; to which the plain, decent, and respectable appearance of the people collected on the occasion not a little contributed.
By continuing steadily at work during the summer-months, the beacon was finished in September. It was terminated, at the height of one hundred feet above the medium level of the sea, with a circular ball of masonry measuring fifteen feet in circumference.
The completion of this beacon did not, however, prevent the frequent occurrence of shipwreck upon the island. It had even become proverbial with some of the inhabitants to observe, ‘that if wrecks were to happen, they might as well be sent to the poor island of Sanday as anywhere else.’ ‘On this and the neighbouring islands,’ says Mr. Stevenson, ‘the inhabitants have certainly had their share of wrecked goods; for here the eye is presented with these melancholy remains in almost every form. For example, although quarries are to be met with generally in these islands, and the stones are very suitable for building dikes, yet instances occur of the land being enclosed, even to a considerable extent, with ship-timbers. The author has actually seen a park paled round, chiefly with cedar-wood and mahogany from the wreck of a Honduras built ship; and in one island, after the wreck of a ship laden with wine, the inhabitants have been known to take claret to their barley-meal porridge, instead of their usual beverage. On complaining to one of the pilots of the badness of his boat’s sails, he replied to the author with some degree of pleasantry, “Had it been His (God’s) will that you came na here wi’ these lights, we might a’ had better sails to our boats, and more o’ other things.” It may further be noticed, that when some of Lord Dundas’s farms are to be let in these islands, a competition takes place for the lease; and it is understood that a much higher rent is paid than the lands would otherwise give, were it not for the chance of making considerably by the agency and advantages attending shipwrecks on the shores of the respective farms.’
In his Report to the Board in the year 1805, Mr. Stevenson proposed that the Start Point beacon should be converted into a lighthouse, and that the north Ronaldsay light should be discontinued, and its tower converted into a beacon, as wrecks were found to happen comparatively seldom upon that island, while hardly a year passed without instances of this kind in the Island of Sanday; for owing to the projecting points of this strangely formed island, the lowness and whiteness of its eastern shores, and the wonderful manner in which the scanty patches of land are intersected with lakes and pools of water, it becomes even in day-light a deception, and has often been fatally mistaken for an open sea. After taking the opinion of persons acquainted with the navigation of these seas, the change was adopted; the works at the Start Point were commenced early in the summer of 1805; by the month of November the light-room was finished, and the light exhibited on the 1st January, 1806.
A melancholy story is connected with the completion of the lighthouse on this fatal island. The principal mason and his assistants being desirous of returning home, proceeded to Stromness on the mainland of Orkney, from whence they were most likely to get a passage to the southward. The party consisted of six in number; and the foreman’s brother, wishing to go directly to his native place, took his passage in a vessel bound from Stromness to Anstruther, while the rest embarked on board a schooner bound for Leith.
The vessel sailed with a fair wind early on the 24th December, 1806. On the following morning they got sight of Kinnaird Head lighthouse in Aberdeenshire, and had the prospect of speedily reaching the Frith of Forth; but the wind having suddenly shifted to the south-east, and increased to a tremendous gale, the vessel immediately put about, and steered in quest of some safe harbour in Orkney. At two o’clock in the afternoon she passed the Portland Frith, and got into the bay of Long Hope, but could not reach the proper anchorage; and at three o’clock both anchors were let go in an outer roadstead. The storm still continuing with unabated force, the cables parted or broke, and the vessel drifted on the island of Flotta. The utmost efforts of those on board to pass a rope to the shore, with the assistance of the inhabitants of the island, proved ineffectual; the vessel struck upon a shelving rock, and, night coming on, sunk in three fathoms water.
Some of the unfortunate crew and passengers attempted to swim ashore, but in the darkness of the night they either lost their way, or were dashed upon the rocks by the surge of the sea; while those who retained hold of the rigging of the ship, being worn out with fatigue and the piercing coldness of the weather during a long winter night, died before morning,—when the shore presented the dreadful spectacle of the wreck of no fewer than five vessels, with many lifeless bodies.
During successive years the commissioners erected a number of lighthouses, and laboured with anxious care to render them as efficient as possible. In some cases where the nature of the accommodation at the lighthouse stations would permit, a guard-room was provided for pilots, and shipwrecked mariners were lodged, and, in necessitous cases, they have even been allowed a sum of money to clothe and carry them to their respective homes. ‘In this way,’ says Mr. Stevenson, ‘it has not unfrequently fallen to the lot of the keepers of the northern lighthouses, to save the lives of perishing seamen, to succour many poor fishermen and pilots, as well as the half-starved and unlucky individuals of water-parties, when driven by stress of weather to these lone places of abode for safety and shelter. In these varied forms, it will not be too much to suppose, that the practice of protecting the navigator in distress, which is said to have formed a chief part of the design of the fire-towers and nautical colleges of the ancients, is thus in some measure restored.’