It was as to some of the details of this stone design that my father asked Professor Playfair to give his opinion, and received the following reply, which was not a little encouraging to the young engineer attempting to improve on the design of the great Smeaton:—
“Mr. Playfair is very sorry that he has scarce had any time to look more particularly over the plans which Mr. Stevenson has been so good as to send him. Mr. Playfair is too little acquainted with practical mechanics to make his opinion of much weight on such a subject as the construction of a lighthouse. But so far as he can presume to judge, the method of connecting the stones proposed by Mr. Stevenson is likely to prove perfectly secure, and has the advantage of being more easily constructed than Mr. Smeaton’s.”
“9th August 1802.”
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The Lord Advocate Hope, one of the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, and Member of Parliament for the city of Edinburgh, who had interested himself much in the Bell Rock question, and often conferred with Mr. Stevenson on his design for the work, determined that the matter should not be allowed to rest, and introduced a Bill into Parliament in 1802–1803 to empower the Board to carry it out.
This Bill passed the House of Commons. The Committee to which it was referred report—“That it appears that a sufficient foundation might be prepared on the north end of the rock, where the surface is highest and of greatest dimensions: That artificers could work five hours at the times of each low-water in the day-time of the summer months, and that if the building should be made of masonry the stones to form it might be prepared on shore, marked and numbered, and carried off to the rock and properly placed: That as the present duties may not for a long time enable the Commissioners to defray the expense of erecting and maintaining a lighthouse on the Bell or Cape Rock, it will be expedient to authorise the Commissioners to levy and take further duties for that purpose, with power to borrow a further sum on the credit of said duties.”
At that early date there was no “standing order” of the House requiring the promoters of a Bill to lodge plans of their proposed works, and my father in his Memoranda says:—“The only plans in Mr. Hope’s hands were those which, in 1800, I submitted to the Lighthouse Board.”
In the House of Lords the Bill met with opposition from the Corporation of the City of London, as including too great a range of coast in the collection of duties, and such alterations and amendments were introduced in the Upper House as rendered it necessary for the Lord Advocate to withdraw the Bill.
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In order to fortify Mr. Stevenson’s views as to the practicability of building a stone tower in such a situation, which was apparently the chief difficulty in all the early negotiations, the Board resolved to take the advice of Mr. Telford, then employed by Government in reporting on the Highland Roads and Bridges and the Caledonian Canal, who, however, was unable to overtake the duty, and thereafter, on Mr. Stevenson’s suggestion, they applied to Mr. John Rennie, Mr. Stevenson’s senior by eleven years, who had, like himself, at the early age of twenty-one, commenced the practice of his profession, and was then settled in London as a civil engineer. Rennie having concurred with Stevenson as to the practicability and expediency of adopting a stone tower, the Lighthouse Board resolved to make another application to Parliament.