THE SKERRY VORE LIGHT. 175 



The preparation of the stone blocks occupied next winter, and by the spring: 

 large numbers were ready and were floated off. In May, 1808, the excavations on the 

 rock were continued, and on the 10th of July the first stone was laid with considerable 

 ceremony. By the last week of November three courses of masonry had been laid. By the end 

 of 1809 the tower had been built to a height of thirty feet, and was almost secure from the 

 fury of the waves. " In his report to the commissioners he stated that he found that the 

 form of slope which he had adopted for the base of the tower, as well as the curve of the 

 building 1 , fully answered his expectations that they presented comparatively small obstructions 

 to the roll of the waves, which played round the column with ease/' The curve of this 

 tower at the base is much greater than that of the Eddystone. The Bell Rock Lighthouse 

 was completed by the end of 1810, and the light was regularly exhibited after the 1st of 

 February, 1811. Counting to the top of the lantern, it is 127 feet high. It may here 

 be remarked that in many works the credit of designing and building this lighthouse has 

 been given to Robert Stevenson, the resident engineer. Rennie, however, has the only 

 rightful claim to be so considered ; he acted throughout as chief engineer, furnished the 

 design down to the pettiest details, settled the kind of stone and other materials to be used, 

 down even to the mortar and mode of mixing it. 



Another work of great labour and difficulty was the erection of a lighthouse on the 

 Skerry vore Rocks, which lie twelve miles W.S.W. of the Isle of Tyree in Argyllshire, and 

 were formerly the scene of numerous wrecks. The operations were commenced in 1838, 

 the architect being Alan Stevenson, son of the Robert Stevenson who was employed on 

 the Bell Rock Lighthouse. The engineer gave the world a succinct account* of the 

 difficulties, dangers, and successful issue of the undertaking. 



The actual construction of the lighthouse had no very remarkable points of difference 

 with the works of Smeaton or Rennie. Stevenson built a rather novel structure on the 

 rock as a temporary barrack for the workmen. It consisted of a wooden tower perched 

 upon a triangular framework, under which was an open gallery, the floor of which was 

 removed at the end of each season, so as to allow free space for the passage of the sea 

 during the storms of winter, but on which, during summer, they kept the stock of coals, 

 the tool-chest, the beef and beer casks, and other smaller material, which they could not, 

 even at that season of the year, leave on the rock itself. Next came the kitchen and 

 provision-store, a six-sided apartment about twelve feet in diameter, and somewhat more 

 than seven feet high, in which small space curtailed as it was by the seven beams which 

 passed through it stood a caboose, capable of cooking for forty men, and various cupboards 

 and lockers lined with tin, for holding biscuits, meal and flour, &c. The next storey held 

 two apartments : one for Mr. Stevenson, in which he' had his hammock, desk, chair and 

 table, books and instruments. The top storey was surmounted by a pyramidal roof, and 

 v/as lined with four tiers of berths, capable of accommodating thirty people. The frame- 

 work was erected on a part of the rock as far removed as possible from the proposed foundation 

 of the lighthouse tower ; but in a great gale which occurred on the 3rd of November it was 

 entirely destroyed and swept from the rock, nothing remaining to point out its site font a 



* "Account of the Skcrryvore Lighthouse, with Notes on the Illumination of Lighthouses," by Alan Stevenson. 



