110 Some Account of the Northern Light-houses. 



in the Irish sea with Liverpool and Dublin, &c. ; but if, from 

 the nature of their voyage, they incur the general duty of the 

 Northern Lights, they pay nothing exclusively for the Isle of 

 Man. These we believe to be all the peculiarities of the duties 

 payable for the Northern Lights, and they are certainly of a 

 very liberal description. After making allowance for some 

 change in the rate of the duties, the sum annually collected for 

 these lights forms a striking proof of the advanced state of the 

 trade of the country. In 1790, it was L. 1477 : 5 : 1; in 

 the year 1802, L. 4386 : 7 : 5 ; and, in 1824, it amounted to 

 L. 24,000 : the debt of the Board at this time being L. 60,000, 

 and the yearly expence of management about L.900. 



Having noticed these particulars, we now proceed to detail 

 the operations of the Northern Lights Board, and our narra- 

 tive will convincingly shew, that the country was never more for- 

 tunate in the appointment of a public board. At the first 

 meeting of the Commissioners, held in the month of August 1786, 

 Sir James Hunter Blair, then Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and 

 Member of Parhament for the city, was elected Chairman*. 

 At this period, the chief lights on the coast of Scotland were 

 the Isle of May in the Frith of Forth, and the C umbrae Isle 

 in the Frith of Clyde ; and at both of these stations open coal 

 fires, placed in elevated choffers, were exhibited to the mariner. 

 Sir James stated to the meeting, that after corresponding with the 

 Port of Liverpool, where reflectors with oil had been substituted 

 for the open coal fire, he recommended that this system should at 

 once be adopted by the Board. The plan brought forward by the 

 late Mr Thomas Smith, engineer to the Board, being approved 

 of, the works were ordered to be proceeded with, by the erection 

 of the four light-houses referred to in the act. " These works,*" 

 we are told, were " necessarily executed on the smallest, plainest, 

 and most simple plan that could be devised, and with such 

 materials as could be easily transported, and most speedily erect > 

 ed, so as to meet the urgent calls of shipping, and answer the 

 very limited state of the funds."*' By the year 1794, in addition 

 to the four original northern lighthouses, two had been erected 

 on the island of Pladda in the Clyde, and two on the Pentland 



* The only Member present at the first Board who still survives, is Sir 

 William Macleod Bannatyne, lately one of the Lords of Session, and then 

 Sheriff of Bute. 



