Bell Rock Lighthouse

“ Some of the great waves burst and are expended upon the rock before they reach the lighthouse; while others strike the base, and embracing the walls, meet on the western side, where [166] the violent collision churns the eddying waters into the wildest foam.
The management of the Bell Rock lighthouse is provided for as follows:—The nearest town is Arbroath, about eleven miles distant, where a cutter called the Pharos is stationed as the lighthouse tender. ”

“ Dangers of a far more serious kind also beset the patient founders of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.
On the 2nd of September, after the first cargo of stones had been landed, and while thirty-two artificers were busily occupied in their various departments of labour, a gale arose, and the attendant vessel—named the Smeaton, after the great English engineer—broke adrift from her moorings. ”

“ The illuminating apparatus adopted was the dioptric, and identical in all respects with the apparatus supplied a few years before to the Tower of Cordova. It is a revolving light, whose full brilliancy is apparent only once in a minute. Elevated 150 feet above the sea level, it is visible at a distance of eighteen miles.
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. ”

“ At a much later date we know that sea lights for such purposes were produced by the burning of wood and coal in chauffers on coasts where they could be well seen. One such beacon fire was shown from a tower on the Isle of May, at the entrance to the Firth of Forth, from the year 1635 till 1816, when the present lighthouse was built, and is supposed to have been the first sea light on the coast of Scotland. It is not unlikely, however, that long before that date some of the most dangerous parts of the Mediterranean were lighted in a like primitive manner. ”

“ Probably the new lighthouse is being discussed in the light of an innovation on their ancestral rights of possession, and later, as its beams fall athwart their nursery, tradition may recall man’s former intrusion on their solitary keep many hundred years ago. ”

“ Moreover, North Britain offers some of the finest and most impressive specimens of the lighthouse builder’s resource and skill to be found in any part of the globe.
When the responsibility for lighting the Scottish coasts was handed over to the Commissioners for Northern Lighthouses, one of their first tasks was the adequate illumination of the wave-swept Inchcape or Bell Rock, which lies some twelve miles off the Scottish mainland in the busy portal of the Firth of Tay. ”

“ The “dangers of the deep” are nothing compared with the dangers of the shore. If the hard rocks of our island could tell the tale of their experience, and if we landsmen could properly appreciate it, we should understand more clearly why it is that sailors love blue (in other words, deep) water during stormy weather.
In order to render the Forth more accessible by removing the danger of the Bell Rock, it was resolved by the Commissioners of Northern Lights to build a lighthouse upon it. ”

“ The Bell Rock was the first lighthouse that was illuminated by Mr. Stevenson’s improved apparatus (shown in section in Fig. 4) , where a is the fountain for the oil, b the burner, and the directions of the incident and52 reflected rays are represented by dotted lines. In Fig. 5 the reflector is shown in elevation ”

“ Winstanley and all his workmen perished—nothing remaining of the edifice but a few stones and a piece of iron chain.
In the spring of 1706 an Act of Parliament was obtained for rebuilding the lighthouse, and a gentleman named Rudyerd, a silk mercer, was the engineer engaged. He placed five courses of heavy stones upon the rock and then erected a superstructure of wood. The lighthouse on the Bell Rock, off the coast of Fife, and the one placed at the entrance of the Mersey on the Black Rock, are similarly constructed, so that there seemed to be good reason for adopting the principle. Mr. ”

“ Two years later he again inspected the light. “The keeper is an old revolutionary soldier,” he reported “and is unable from sickness to give the lighthouse his constant personal attention. The light, however, shows well from a distance.”
A Jones fog bell was placed near Bald Head Lighthouse in 1855. In the same year the Lighthouse Board recommended the substitution of “a third-order lens, larger model, 360°, for the present apparatus.” ”

“ The octagonal brick tower 54 feet in height was built in 1910. Because of the height of the rock, the light was 168 feet above the level of the lake and could be seen for 22 miles. An incandescent oil-vapor lamp was used inside the third-order lens, producing a light of 450,000 candlepower. The station was also equipped with a compressed air operated diaphone fog signal, sounding a blast every 20 seconds in time of fog. Split Rock Lighthouse is one of the most frequently visited lighthouses in the United States. ”

“ Whether we consider this building as an erection of great difficulty, or, in a nautical point of view, as adding much to the comfort and protection of the mariner, and safety of property, upon a range of coast extending almost to the whole eastern shores of Great Britain, its importance is evident. If it be proper, therefore, on any occasion, to attach importance to the act of laying the first stone of a public building, that of the Bell Rock Light-house cannot be said to yield to any in point of celebrity, either for the peculiarity of its situation, or the importance of its object. ”

“ In 1838 Congress appropriated $3,000 for erecting a lighthouse at Race Rock but the money was never expended. In 1852 the Lighthouse Board reported: “Various efforts have been made, and numerous appropriations expended, in endeavoring to place an efficient and permanent mark on this point. Buoys cannot be kept on it, and spindles have hitherto only remained until the breaking up of the ice in the spring.” In 1853 $7,000 was appropriated “for a beacon on Race Rock.” ”

“ Lightkeepers are not allowed to read, write, or work while on watch in the lightroom, as duty there requires all the attention they can give to keep the lights burning brightly, and at revolving lights to watch and wind up the machinery periodically. Then during certain states of the atmosphere the glass of the lantern requires cleaning, more especially when snow is falling on it and obscuring the light. A graphic description of this operation at the Bell Rock is given in the Notes. ”

“ Overhead, the magnificent lantern, its eight-ringed circle of flame burning at full pressure, illumined the drifting vapor with an intensity that seemed to be born of the sturdy granite pillar of which it was the fitting diadem. Hard and strong externally as the everlasting rock on which it stood,—replete within with burnished steel and polished brass, great cylinders and powerful pumps,—the lighthouse thrust its glowing torch beyond the reach of the most daring wave. ”

“ Escaping this and other perils, Smeaton saw his beautiful edifice finally brought to completion; and on the 16th of October a light was once more shown from the Eddystone rock.
The lighthouse has now, as Mr. Smiles remarks, withstood the storms of upwards of a century—a solid monument to the genius of its architect and builder. Sometimes, he says, [30] when the sea rolls in with more than ordinary fury from the Atlantic, and the billows are driven up the Channel by the force of a south-west wind, the lighthouse is enveloped in spray, and its light momentarily obscured. ”

“ The lighthouse most difficult to build is that on the submerged rock or partly submerged rock. Race Rock Light, in Long Island Sound, belongs to this class. Portions of Race Rock are three and others thirteen feet under water. Diving-bells were used to level the foundations for the lighthouse, and the masonry [Pg 205] and concrete under water were laid in the same way. The United States has two other lighthouses built on submerged rocks, Minot's Ledge in Boston harbor, and Spectacle Reef, on Lake Huron. ”

“ It has now stood forty-four years, a memorial of the ingenuity and indefatigable labours of Mr John Smeaton, who, guarding against the defects of the two former buildings, constructed the whole of stone; the blocks of the solid part are curiously dove-tailed into each other; and every thing unnecessarily tending to give resistance to the water is carefully avoided, while the whole is completely fire-proof. The next light-house erected upon a situation of this kind, was the Smalls, which is placed upon eight beams of oak, arranged round a centre one. ”

“ Monday, 23d.
Many Strangers visit the present interesting state of the Works.
The present interesting state of the Light-house, which had now attained the height of 90 feet, induced a great many strangers to visit the Bell Rock, while the machinery was in operation, and the Light-house and Beacon were connected with the wooden-bridge; and beams were projected from the windows of the store-room and bed-room, for the suspension of the tackle with which the stones were raised. ”

“ Bell Rock was only one of twenty lighthouses Robert Stevenson helped to build, but it was by far the most difficult one ... and even to-day, after it has been lighted for more than a hundred years, it still remains unique—a monument to his skill.
Bell Rock was practically a reef completely submerged at full tide and only a few feet of its crest visible at low water. To raise a tower on it meant placing a foundation under water, a new and perilous experiment. ”

“ A Beacon of any form, unprovided with a light, must always be considered an imperfect land-mark, and therefore various modes have been contemplated, for more completely pointing out the position of the Carr Rock. It has been proposed that phosphoric lights should be exhibited from the top of the Building. This object, however, would be more certainly accomplished, by the erection of leading lights, upon the Island of May and Mainland of Fife. ”

“ Today the lighthouse is a white conical tower, with a fog signal house attached, built on Fort Point. It rises 52 feet above the water and its 3,000 candlepower fourth-order electric light flashes a green light visible 13 miles. During fog a bell strikes once every 10 seconds. ”

“ Lighthouse building on the Great Lakes demands the highest skill, incalculable ingenuity, and the soundest of design and workmanship. Consequently, some of the guardian lights distributed around these shores, such as Spectacle Reef, the Rock of Ages, Colchester, and Red Rock lighthouses, are striking evidences of the engineer’s handiwork. ”

“ This ridge of rocks is a mile long, but has only one small rock appearing above the water and has for ages been the terror of seamen. The first lighthouse was built in 1699, and four years later was swept away by a storm. A second, built in 1708, was burnt in 1755. The third, built by Smeaton in 1759, resisted the wind and weather for over a hundred years. The rocks on which it was [Pg 163] built were then found to be giving way, and it was removed to Plymouth Hoe, and a new and higher lighthouse built on another part of the ridge. ”

“ The mighty stone tower still remains for many purposes the most effective method of lighting the pathways of the sea, but it is both exceedingly difficult to build, and it is very expensive. Within comparatively recent years busy inventors have thought out several new plans for lighthouses, which are quite as wonderful and important in their way as wireless telegraphy and the telephone are in the realm of electricity.
One of these inventions is the iron-pile or screw-pile lighthouse, and the other is the iron cylinder lighthouse. ”

“ It became obvious that the establishment of a lighthouse here was absolutely necessary, and after the usual amount of official circumlocution, and the preparation of a great many surveys and plans, things at length took a business-like turn, and the building of a lighthouse was commenced on a large rock at the extremity of the reef, which rose abruptly out of the water as if specially intended by nature to assist in the work of humanity. ”

“ The task of constructing a sea-rock lighthouse is as tedious and protracted an enterprise as one could conceive, because the engineer and his workmen are entirely at the mercy of the weather. Each great work has bristled with its particular difficulties; each has presented its individual problems for solution. Few modern lighthouses, however, have so baffled the engineer and have occupied such a number of years in completion, as the Ar-men light off Cape Finisterre. ”