From a bust by Joseph, now in the library of Bell Rock Lighthouse.
The Bell Rock Lighthouse, on the Eastern Coast of Scotland.
From the painting by Turner. The Bell Rock Lighthouse was built by Robert Stevenson, grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, on the Inchcape Reef, in the North Sea, near Dundee, Scotland, in 1807-1810.
John Smeaton walked in the woods and thought of all these problems. He tells quaintly in his memoirs how he observed the strength with which an oak-tree bore its great weight of leaves and branches; and when he built his lighthouse, it was wide and flaring at the base, like the oak, and deeply rooted into the sea-rock with wedges of wood and iron. The waist was tapering and cylindrical, bearing the weight of the keeper's quarters and the lantern as firmly and jauntily as the oak bears its branches. Moreover, he built of stone, to avoid the possibility of fire, and he dovetailed each stone into its neighbour, so that the whole tower would face the wind and the waves as if it were one solid mass of granite. For years Smeaton's Eddystone blinked a friendly warning to English mariners, serving its purpose perfectly, until the Brothers of Trinity saw fit to build a larger tower in its place.
In England the famous lighthouses of Bell Rock, built by Robert Stevenson, Skerryvore, and Wolf Rock are all stone towers; and in our own country, Minot's Ledge, off Boston Harbour, more difficult of construction than any of them, Spectacle Reef light in Lake Huron, and Stannard Rock light in Lake Superior are good examples of Smeaton's method of building.
The Present Lighthouse on Minot's Ledge, near the Entrance of Massachusetts Bay, Fifteen Miles Southeast of Boston.
"Rising sheer out of the sea, like a huge stone cannon, mouth upward."—Longfellow.