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The Board of Northern Lighthouses was constituted by Act of Parliament in 1786; its members were the Lord Advocate and Solicitor-General, the chief magistrates of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, and Campbeltown, and the Sheriffs of the maritime counties of Scotland. These Commissioners, happily for the interests of navigation, took a more enlightened view of their duties than the Chamber of Commerce of Edinburgh, and after hearing and considering Mr. Smith’s proposals, formally appointed him their Engineer.
The preamble of the Act constituting the Northern Lighthouse Board, states that it would greatly conduce to the security of navigation and the fisheries if four lighthouses were erected in the north part of Great Britain. Such, it would seem, was the limited state of trade in Scotland, that the erection of these four lighthouses was all that was contemplated, on a coast, extending to about 2000 miles, of perhaps the most dangerous navigation in Europe. It is now marked by sixty lighthouse stations for the guidance of the sailor, but new claims continue to be made, and new lighthouses are still admitted to be required.
The newly established Lighthouse Board at once entered on its important duties, and the first light they exhibited was Kinnaird Head, which was designed by Mr. Smith and lighted in 1787.
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These pursuits being very congenial to my father’s mechanical turn of mind, he had rendered himself useful to Mr. Smith in carrying them out, and was intrusted, at the early age of nineteen, to superintend the erection of a lighthouse on the island of Little Cumbrae, in the river Clyde, according to a design which Mr. Smith had furnished to the Cumbrae Light Trustees. This connection soon led to his adoption as Mr. Smith’s partner in business, and, in 1799, to his union with his eldest daughter by a former marriage.
During the cessation of the works at Cumbrae in winter, my father, who had determined to follow the profession of a Civil Engineer, applied himself, as appears from class note-books in my possession, with great zeal to the practice of surveying and architectural drawing, and to the study of mathematics at the Andersonian Institution at Glasgow. Of the kindness of Dr. Anderson, who presided over that Institution, he ever entertained a most grateful remembrance, and often spoke of him as one of his best advisers and kindest friends, and in the Memoranda already noticed he records his obligations to him in the following words:—“It was the practice of Professor Anderson kindly to befriend and forward the views of his pupils; and his attention to me during the few years I had the pleasure of being known to him was of a very marked kind, for he directed my attention to various pursuits, with the view to my coming forward as an engineer.”
After completing the Cumbrae Lighthouse he was further engaged, under Mr. Smith, in erecting two lighthouses on the Pentland Skerries in Orkney, where, in view of what lay before him at the Bell Rock, he had the useful experience of living four months in a tent on an uninhabited island, and arranging the landing of the whole of the materials of the lighthouses in the difficult navigation of the Pentland Firth. But here also he had a personal experience of God’s overruling Providence, which clung to him through life, and, as we shall find, proved his stay in times of danger, when personal resources had ceased to prove availing. In returning from the Pentland Skerries, in 1794, he embarked in the sloop ‘Elizabeth’ of Stromness, and proceeded as far as Kinnaird Head, when the vessel was becalmed about three miles from the shore. The captain kindly landed my father, who continued his journey to Edinburgh by land. A very different fate, however, awaited his unfortunate shipmates. A violent gale came on, which drove the ‘Elizabeth’ back to Orkney, where she was totally wrecked, and all on board unhappily perished.
Notwithstanding my father’s active duties in summer, he was so zealous in the pursuit of knowledge that he contrived, during several successive winters, on his return from his practical work, to avail himself of the Philosophical classes at the University of Edinburgh. In this manner he attended Professor Playfair’s second and third Mathematical courses, two sessions of Robison’s Natural Philosophy, two courses of Chemistry under Dr. Hope, and two of Natural History under Professor Jameson. To these he added a course of Moral Philosophy under Dugald Stewart, a course of Logic under Dr. Ritchie, and one of Agriculture under Professor Low. “I was prevented, however,” he remarks, in the Memoranda, “from following my friend Dr. Neill for my degree of M.A. by my slender knowledge of Latin, in which my highest book was the Orations of Cicero, and by my total want of Greek.” Such zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, and views so enlarged of the benefits and value of a liberal education, were characteristics of a mind of no ordinary vigour; so that, early trained to practical work, and inspired with a true love of his profession, it was not unnatural that on the resignation of Mr. Smith the Board should have appointed Mr. Stevenson to succeed him as their Engineer.
The first annual report made by him to the Board is dated June 1798, and he continued annually to prepare one up to the time of his resignation in 1843.