At Arbroath suitable buildings are erected for the light-keepers’ families, with each a piece of enclosed ground, and a seat in the parish-church. Connected with these buildings are store-houses, a room for the master and crew of the attending vessels, and a signal-tower fifty feet high, at the top of which is a small observatory furnished with an excellent achromatic telescope, a flag-staff, and a copper signal-ball measuring eighteen feet in diameter. By means of this and a corresponding ball at the lighthouse, daily signals are kept up to signify when all is well. Should the ball at the rock be allowed to remain down, as is the case when anything is particularly wanted, or in the event of sickness, the tender immediately puts out to sea.
The expense of this great national undertaking, together with the buildings at Arbroath, the attending vessel, and the first year’s stores, amounted to about sixty-one thousand three hundred and fifty pounds.
We cannot close this notice of the Bell Rock lighthouse without recording a curious accident which occurred on the night of the 9th February, 1832, about 10 o’clock. A large-herring gull struck one of the south-eastern mullions of the light-room with such force, that two of the polished plates of glass measuring about two feet square and a quarter of an inch thick, were shivered to pieces, and scattered over the floor, to the great alarm of the keeper on watch, and the other two inmates, 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 pieces of broken glass were so minute, that no injury was done to the valuable red glass. The gull was found to measure five feet between the tips of the wings. In its gullet was found a large herring, and in its throat a piece of plate-glass about an inch in length.
While the Bell-Rock lighthouse was in progress, Mr. Stevenson was often struck with the frequent and distressing occurrence of shipwrecks at the Carr Rock. The Carr forms the seaward termination of a reef of sunken rocks which appear at low water, extending about a mile and three quarters from the shore of Fifeness, on the northern side of the entrance of the Frith of Forth. The very dangerous position of this rock, as a turning point in the navigation of the northern-bound shipping of the Frith, required that this rock, in connection with the several lighthouses of the Bell Rock, Isle of May, and Inchkeith, should be made as easily distinguishable to the mariner as possible. In the course of nine years no fewer than sixteen vessels had been either lost or stranded on the Carr Rocks. Therefore, in 1809, moorings were laid down for a floating buoy, ‘but owing to the heavy swell of sea and the rocky sand-stone bottom on this part of the coast, it was found hardly possible to prevent the buoy from occasionally drifting, even although it had been attached to part of the great chain made from bar-iron an inch and a half square, with which the Bell-Rock floating-light had been moored for upwards of four years without injury. The moorings of the Carr Rock buoy, from the continual rubbing upon the sand-stone bottom, were worn through with the friction in the course of ten months; and during the four years which it rode here, though regularly examined and replaced in the proper season of the year, it was no less than five times adrift, to the great inconvenience and hazard of shipping.’
Such being the case, it was resolved, however difficult and perilous the undertaking, to erect a beacon of masonry upon the rock. The length of the Carr Rock, from north to south, measures seventy-five feet, but its greatest breadth, as seen at low-water of spring-tides, is only twenty-three feet; hence it was not possible to obtain a base for a building of greater diameter than eighteen feet. The surface of the rock was also so rugged that it was necessary to excavate part of the foundation-pit of the building to the depth of seven feet. The difficulties were still further increased on account of the foundation being partly under the level of the lowest tides, so that a coffer-dam was required. It was further necessary, after each tide’s work, to remove and carry ashore part of this coffer-dam; so that on the return of the workmen at ebb-tide much time was lost in readjusting the coffer-dam, and in pumping the water out of the foundation-pit.
Some idea may be formed of the difficulties attending the early stages of this work, from the fact that during the whole of the first season, or summer of 1813, the workmen could not command more than forty-one hours’ work upon the rock; during the second season the time was only fifty-three hours. These two years were entirely occupied in excavating and preparing the foundation, and in laying ten stones, or the half course of masonry, which brought the foundation to a uniform level for the first entire course of the building. Mr. Stevenson contrasts this slow progress with that made at the Bell Rock during the first two seasons. Although this building was situated twelve miles from the shore, three courses were erected, the diameter of the base being forty-two feet, besides the erection of a beacon-house or barrack for the workmen. ‘The establishment for the works at the Bell Rock was of course on a much larger scale than that of the Carr Rock; but still the latter was equally effective, and the same apparatus, artificers, and seamen, were employed at both.’
During the third year’s work, the second course of the masonry was completed upon the Carr; and nine stones of the third course were laid by the 3rd of October, when a heavy ground-swell obliged the workmen precipitately to leave the rock and take to their boats. Before the cement was fixed, the surge of the sea had washed it out; the oaken trenails were wrenched off, and the whole of the nine blocks of stone swept off the rock and lost in deep water, though they had been completely dove-tailed and fitted on the same principles as the masonry of the Bell-Rock lighthouse, where not a single stone was lost during the whole progress of the work.
During the fourth season, the operations were retarded by several untoward accidents. The wind and the waves sometimes destroyed in a moment the labour of weeks; but by dint of skill and untiring patience and industry, they succeeded by the month of November in completing the sixteenth course, which raised the building to the height of about twenty feet.
The fifth year was particularly unfortunate. The whole of the masonry having been completed, the coast was visited in November with a gale of wind, accompanied with a heavy swell of sea, which washed down the upper part of the building, and reduced it to the height of the fifth course, which formed part of the fourth year’s work. It was therefore determined to modify the original design of the work. Instead of completing this beacon with masonry, and providing the machine and large bell, which was to have measured five feet across the mouth, to be tolled by the alternate rise and fall of the tide, it was now determined to erect six columns of cast iron upon the remaining courses of masonry, to terminate in a cast iron ball of the diameter of three feet, formed in ribs, elevated about twenty-five feet above the medium level of the sea. This beacon was completed in September 1821.