In Byways of Scottish History

by Louis A. Barbé

III

An entry in the Register of the Privy Council for the year 1577 not only bears out de Beaugué's statement with regard to the presence of pirates about the May, but it also suggests the complicity of the people on the neighbouring coast. It sets forth that "the Council has thought convenient that the persons, buyers, and intromettors with the goods taken in piracy by a French ship of war lately frequenting about the May, shall be called before my Lord Admiral and his deputies, as well to make surety that the same shall be forthcoming to the just owners, friends, and confederates of this realm, as to underlie punishment for buying and resset of unlawful gudis upon the stream, according to the laws and justice".

A peculiar use to which the May was put in 1580 is recorded in the same Register. Certain persons "infectit with the pest" having arrived within the waters and river of Tay, on board a ship of which John Anderson was master, charge had been given them to withdraw themselves, together with their ship and goods, with all possible diligence, to the Isle of May, and to remain there, under pain of death, till they were cleansed and had obtained licence to depart. In spite of that, they had gone farther up the Tay, with the intention of landing and selling their goods. They were consequently ordered a second time, under the same penalty, to be rigidly executed, to repair to the Isle of May; and the lieges were commanded, by open proclamation, at all places needful, not to suffer any of them to come to land or harbour, under the same penalty of death. If any of the infected persons violated the order, the Provost and Magistrates within whose bounds the transgression had taken place were to cause them and those who harboured them to be apprehended and executed; the infected houses were to be closed, and the ship, boats, and goods to be burnt.

The first lay proprietor of the May, Patrick Learmonth, retained possession of the island for only two years. In 1551, it was conferred on Andrew Balfour of Monquhannie. Seven years later, it was again granted to John Forret of Fyngask, with the proviso that, in view of the exposed situation of the isle, he should not be bound to pay the feu duty at any time when there was war between Scotland and any foreign nation. A still later owner of the May was Allan Lamont, by whom it was sold to Alexander Cunningham, Laird of Barnes. Cunningham built on it "a convenient house, with accommodation for a family". It was he, too, who, at the request and for the benefit of the seafaring population of the towns situated on the northern coast of the firth, set up a lighthouse, the first on the Scottish seaboard, on the Isle of May. The Register of the Privy Council enables us to follow some of the negotiations entered upon with a view to its erection. In January, 1631, the Lords of the Privy Council, in consequence of Cunningham's application, ordered letters to be directed, charging the Provosts and Bailies of Edinburgh, Dundee, St. Andrews, Crail, Anstruther, Pittenweem, Dysart, Kirkcaldy, Kinghorn, and Burntisland to send commissioners to represent them before the Council, and to give their advice and opinion "anent ane propositioun made to the Kingis Majestie for erecting of lichts upon the Isle of May, as ane thing thought to be most necessarie and expedient for the saulfetie of shippes arryving within the Firth". The question of the costs which the upkeep of the light would entail appears to have presented considerable difficulty at first. In spite of petitions from skippers and others most directly interested in the scheme, "the Lords of the Secret Council having heard and considered the report made by the commissioners for the burghs touching the lights craved by Alexander Cunningham of Barnes to be erected on the Isle of May, and being well advised therewith, and with the reasons and grounds of the same", found "no reason for imposing any duty to be uplifted towards the maintenance of the said lights". The matter was not, however, allowed to drop; and on the 22nd of April, 1636, the King at length acceding to the request of the coast towns, authorized Cunningham to build a lighthouse and to keep it up for nineteen years. Funds for its maintenance were to be obtained directly from those most benefited by it, by the imposition of a duty of two shillings Scots—that is, two pence sterling—per ton, on all ships sailing between St. Abb's Head and Dunottar. Cunningham erected in the same year, "a tower forty feet high, vaulted to the top and covered with flagstones, whereon all the year over, there burned in the night-time a fire of coals for a light". Sibbald states that the coals employed were from Wemyss, and that these were preferred on account of their hardness and of the clearness of their light, that about three hundred and eighty tons were consumed annually, and that three men were employed in keeping the beacon, two of whom were always on watch during the night. In the edition of Sibbald's work published in 1803, it is mentioned that prior to 1790, but subsequently to the time when the dues had been fixed at three-halfpence per ton for Scottish ships, and threepence for foreign—including English—vessels, the revenue of the lighthouse was farmed at £280 per annum, that it then rose to £960, and that in 1800 it was further augmented to £1500—"a striking proof of the increase of trade in this country". To commemorate the erection of this earliest of the Northern Lights, and to indicate—not absolutely correctly, however—the date, a scholar of St. Andrews composed these two lines of Latin doggerel:

Flumina ne noceant neu flumina lumina Maia PrebVIt et MeDIIs InsVLa LVX et aqVIS.

There is a tradition that the architect who planned and built the tower perished, on his voyage to the mainland, in a storm which some old women, then supposed to be witches, were burnt for raising.

In the description of the May contributed to the Statistical Account of Scotland published in 1792, the Rev. James Forrester reports a very melancholy accident which happened whilst he was employed in drawing up his notice, and which he thinks ought to be recorded as a warning for future times. "The keeper of the lighthouse, his wife, and five children were suffocated. One child, an infant, is still alive, who was found sucking at the breast of its dead mother. Two men, who were assistants to the keeper, were senseless, but got out alive. This truly mournful event was owing to the cinders having been allowed to accumulate for more than ten years. The cinders reached up to the window of the apartments where these unfortunate people slept. They were set on fire by live coals falling from the lighthouse, and the wind blowing the smoke into the windows, and the door below being shut, the consequences were inevitable. These persons were the only inhabitants, and all of them lodged in the lighthouse. The families who formerly resided there lodged in houses detached from it. The old plan is to be again adopted, and houses are preparing for lodging the keeper and a boat's crew, which will be of advantage to all the coast, as they will be ready to give intelligence when the herrings come into the Firth."

After the Union the unequal incidence of the duties leviable for the light of May—English and Irish vessels being charged double rates as foreigners—gave rise to much dissatisfaction. In addition to this, there was a general feeling that anything that was payable in the form of a tax ought not to be held as private property. With regard to the light itself, it gradually became more evident that a coal fire, exposed in an open choffer to the vicissitudes of the weather, was altogether inadequate to the requirements of the shipping trade. After the appointment of a Lighthouse Board in Scotland in the year 1786, those most directly affected often expressed a wish that the light of May should be included as one of the Northern Lights; that it should get the benefit of the most recent improvements; that, in accordance with the spirit and conditions of the Act for the regulation of the Northern Lighthouses, the invidious distinction between the shipping of the three kingdoms should be done away with; and, further, that there should be some prospect of the duties being modified and ultimately ceasing altogether. Moved by these various considerations, the shipping trade of the Firth of Forth repeatedly approached the family of Scotstarvit, into whose hands the property and light of May had come by purchase, in 1714, with a view to the improvement of the old beacon. In consequence of representations from the Chamber of Commerce of Edinburgh, which visited the island in 1786, the choffer was enlarged to the capacity of a square of three feet, and the quantity of fuel annually consumed increased to about 400 tons. The Chamber further recommended that the stock of coals, hitherto exposed to the open air on the island, should in future be kept under cover, and that the supply should invariably be obtained from the collieries of Wemyss, of which the coal was considered fittest for maintaining a steady light, and was consequently employed at Heligoland and other coal lights on the Continent. All these conditions were complied with by Miss Scott of Scotstarvit's tutors, and from that time the May beacon became the most powerful coal light in the kingdom, the capacity of its choffer being double that of any other. But even these improvements could not prevent it from being unsteady in bad weather, and there still remained the great disadvantage that limekilns and other accidental open fires upon the neighbouring coast were apt to be mistaken for the May light. To obviate the possibility of such mistakes, the Trinity House of Leith, in 1790, presented a memorial to the Duke of Portland, who, through his marriage with Miss Scott, had become proprietor of the May, and requested him to replace the coal-beacon by an oil-light with reflectors, enclosed in a glazed light-room. In spite of this application and of many others from various quarters, no further improvements were introduced at the time.

In the year 1809, Robert Stevenson, engineer to the Northern Lights Board, foreseeing that, notwithstanding the recent erection of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, the navigation of this part of the coast would still be very dangerous unless the light of May were improved, took an opportunity of bringing the matter under the notice of the Commissioners, who were not of opinion, however, that it could be taken up by them except at the instance of the proprietor. In the following year the question was brought into prominence by an event of serious importance. Early in the morning of the 19th of December two of His Majesty's ships, the frigates Nymphen and Pallas, were wrecked near Dunbar, in consequence, it was believed, of the fire of a limekiln on the Haddingtonshire coast having been mistaken for the May light. The ships were completely lost, but, the weather being moderate, only nine men were drowned out of the joint crews of some 600. It was a remarkable circumstance attending the catastrophe, that, although the two ships had sailed in company, and had struck within a few miles of each other, their similar fate was perfectly unknown to the respective crews till late in the day.

This loss of £100,000 roused the Government to action. Lord Viscount Melville, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time, applied to the Lighthouse Board to take over the light of May as one of the Northern Lights. In the negotiations that ensued, the Duke of Portland proposed a scheme, in accordance with which he was to carry out the suggested alterations, and the Commissioners were to become his lessees. This proposal did not, however, meet with the approval of the latter, their opinion being that the only position they could assume in the transaction was that of purchasers for the public. The ultimate result was the acquisition of the Isle of May, together with the light duties, for the sum of £60,000—£3000 less than the Duke of Portland had originally demanded. This was in 1814. That same year an Act was passed reducing the light duty to one penny per ton for all British ships. Immediate measures were also taken for carrying out the necessary improvements. In the course of the following summer, a new lighthouse was erected, and a light from oil, with reflectors, was exhibited on the 1st of February, 1816. The following official description of the new light of May was published at the time:—