CHAP. V. SMEATON'S HARBOURS. 63 



bottom of the river. Writing to Pickernell, he said, 

 " All our honours are now in the dust ! It cannot now 

 be said that in the course of thirty years' practice, and 

 engaged in some of the most difficult enterprises, not 

 one of Smeaton's works has failed ! Hexham Bridge is 

 a melancholy instance to the contrary." Thus the same 

 engineer who had founded a lighthouse far out at sea, so 

 firmly as to bid defiance to the utmost fury of the waves, 

 was baffled by an inland stream. " The news came to 

 me," he says, "like a thunderbolt, as it was a stroke I 

 least expected, and even yet can scarcely form a prac- 

 tical belief as to its reality. There is, however, one 

 consolation that attends this great misfortune, and that 

 is, that I cannot see that anybody is really to blame, or 

 that anybody is blamed ; as we all did our best, according 

 to what appeared ; and all the experience I have gained 

 is, not to attempt to build a bridge upon a gravel bottom 

 in a river subject to such violent rapidity." The fault 

 committed seems to have been, that Smeaton was satis- 

 fied with setting his piers upon a crust of gravel slightly 

 beneath the bottom level of the river ; and that the 

 increased scour of the stream under the arches, caused 

 by the contraction of the water-way, had washed away 

 the bottom, and thus undermined the work. But the 

 founding of piers in deep rivers was as yet very imper- 

 fectly understood ; and the art was not brought to its 

 perfection until the time of Eennie, who went down 

 through the bed of the river, far beneath all possible 

 scour, until he had reached a solid foundation, which he 

 also piled, and on that secure basis he planted the strong 

 masonry of his piers. 



Among his various works, Smeaton was also employed 

 in the designing of harbours. With the exception, how- 

 ever, of Ramsgate, these were for the most part confined 

 to the improvement of the existing accommodation. At 

 St. Ives, in Cornwall, where he formed his first harbour, 

 in 1766, nature had provided a convenient haven 



