Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/279

Rh like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, came in sight of this long ridge of rocks (chiefly under water), on which the tide breaks in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low broad rocks at one end of the reef, which is about a mile in length. These are never entirely under water, though the surf dashes over them. To go through all the forms, Hamilton, Duff, and I resolved to land upon these bare rocks in company with Mr. Stevenson. Pull through a very heavy swell with great difficulty, and approach, a tremendous surf dashing over black pointed rocks. Our rowers, however, get the boat into a quiet creek between two rocks, where we contrive to land, well wetted. I saw nothing remarkable in my way, excepting several seals, which we might have shot, but, in the doubtful circumstances of the landing, we did not care to bring guns. We took possession of the rock in name of the commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr. S. It will be a most desolate position for a lighthouse—the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at fourteen miles' distance. So much for the Skerry Vhor.—It is only necessary to add to this amusing sketch, that the lighthouse contemplated by Mr. Stevenson was erected in 1842, by Mr. Alan Stevenson, his son, and successor in office, who in this difficult undertaking not only followed his father's instructions, but emulated his perseverance and scientific ability.

During the long course of Mr. Stevenson's professional labours, his calm calculating sagacity, and adaptation of means at once simple and effectual to an end that seemed unattainable, or not to be attained without the most complex agencies, were conspicuous to the last; and although not himself an inventor, he could largely improve on the inventions of others, and turn them to the best account. It was thus that the Eddystone lighthouse suggested to him the bolder and more difficult undertaking of that on the Bell Rock; while his plan of the jib and balance-cranes, and the changes which he adopted in the masonry of the building, especially in the laying of the floors, so that their stones should form part of the outward wall, were important improvements on the plans of Mr. Smeaton, whom he still was proud to call his master. The best mode of lighting these ocean lamps was also a subject of his inquiry; and the result was, his invention of the intermittent and the flashing lights, the former suddenly disappearing at irregular intervals, and the latter emitting a powerful gleam every five seconds—a mode of illumination distinct from that of the ordinary lighthouses in the same range, and admirably suited for the dangerous navigation of narrow seas. For the last of these inventions he was honoured with a gold medal from the king of the Netherlands. While his scientific anxiety and skill were thus devoted to the improving and perfecting of those buildings upon which the safety of navigation so much depends, he did not overlook the welfare of those to whom the superintendence of their bale-fires is committed; and his humane regulations, by which the comforts of these self-devoted prisoners of the ocean pillars were promoted, as well as his rules of discipline, by which their duties were simplified, introduced a marked change for the better into the dreary life of those upon whose watchfulness and fidelity so vast an amount of human happiness is at stake. Mr. Stevenson, indeed, may justly be said not only to have created the lighthouse system of Scotland, where it was so much needed, but to have brought it also to that state of perfection in which it has become the model to other maritime nations.