Such is the stirring history of the Skerryvore lighthouse. The reader will think, perhaps, that it differs but little from that of the Bell Rock and the Eddystone. Nevertheless we could not pass over it in silence, for it completed a work which may fitly be called “the art of building lighthouses in the open sea”—an art entirely unknown before the days of Smeaton, and Robert and Alan Stevenson—three men of whom Ocean, if it could translate into words the “rhythmical smile” of its summer calm, or the harsher accents of its equinoctial wrath, might say with the poet,—
“Great I must call them, for they conquered me!”
CHAPTER V.
NORTH UNST, 1854.—SUNDERLAND, 1841.
The erection of the North Unst tower, completed in 1854, offered no difficulties comparable to those which tested the skill and perseverance of the builder of the Bell Rock; yet, not the less, it is interesting as one of the most important results obtained by our English engineers. As our illustration shows, it stands rooted on an isolated reef, near the Shetland Isles, whose elevation above the sea is estimated at 200 feet.