Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science Part 8

II.--THE BELL ROCK.

The Inch Cape, or Bell Rock, is a long, narrow reef on the east coast of Scotland, at the mouth of the Frith of Tay, and some dozen of miles from the nearest land. At high water the whole ledge is buried out of sight; and even at the ebb the highest part of it is only three or four feet out of the water. In the days of old, as the tradition goes, one of the abbots of Arbroath, among many good works, exhibited his piety and humanity by placing upon a float attached to the perilous reef a large bell, so suspended as to be tolled by the rising and falling of the waves.

"On a buoy, in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung."

Many a storm-tossed mariner heard the friendly knell that warned him of the nearness of the fatal rock, and changed his course before it was too late, with blessings on the good old monk who had hung up the bell; but after some years, one of the pirates who infested the coast cut it down in wanton cruelty, and was one of the first who suffered from the loss.

Not long after, he perished upon this very rock, which a dense fog shrouded from sight, and no bell gave timely warning of.

"And even in his dying fear, One dreadful sound did the rover hear; A sound as if with the Inch Cape Bell, The devil below was ringing his knell."

After the lapse of many years, two attempts were made to raise a beacon of spars upon the rock; but one after the other they fell a prey to the angry waves, and were hardly set up before they disappeared. It was not till the beginning of the century that the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses took up the idea of erecting a lighthouse on this reef, the most dangerous on all the coast. Several years elapsed before they got the sanction of Parliament to the undertaking, and 1807 arrived before it was actually entered upon.

Mr. Robert Stevenson, to whom the work was intrusted as engineer, had from a very early age been employed in connection with lighthouses. He went almost directly from school to the office of Mr. Thomas Smith of Edinburgh, and when that gentleman was appointed engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners, became his a.s.sistant, and afterwards successor. When only nineteen, Mr. Stevenson superintended the construction of the lighthouse on the island of Little c.u.mbray; and during the time he was engineer to the Commissioners, which post he held till 1842, he erected no fewer than forty-two lighthouses, and introduced a great many valuable improvements into the system. His reputation, however, will be chiefly perpetuated as the architect of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.

On the 17th August 1807, Mr. Stevenson and his men landed on the rock, to the astonishment and discomposure of the seals who had, from time immemorial, been in undisturbed possession of it, and now floundered off into the water on the approach of the usurpers. The workmen at once set about preparing the rock for the erection of a temporary pyramid on which a barrack-house was to be placed for the reception of the workmen.

They could only work on the rock for a few hours at spring-tide. As soon as the flood-tide began to rise around them, putting out the fire of the smith's forge, and gradually covering the rock, they had to gather up their tools and retreat to a floating barrack moored at a considerable distance, in order to reach which they had to row in small boats to the tender, by which they were then conveyed to their quarters. The operations of this first season were particularly trying to the men, on account of their having to row backwards and forwards between the rock and the tender at every tide, which in rough weather was a very heavy pull, and having often after that to work on the rock knee deep in water, only quitting it for the boats when absolutely compelled by the swelling waves. Sometimes the sea would be so fierce for days together that no boat could live in it, and the men had, therefore, to remain cooped up wearily on board the floating barrack.

One day in September, when the engineer and thirty-one men were on the rock, the tender broke from its moorings, and began to drift away from the rock, just as the tide was rising. Mr. Stevenson, perched on an eminence above the rest, surveying them at their labours, was the first, and for a while, the men being all intent on their work, the only one, who observed what had happened. He said nothing, but went to the highest point of the rock, and kept an anxious watch on the progress of the vessel and the rising of the sea. First the men on the lower tier of the works, then by degrees those above them, struck work on the approach of the water. They gathered up their tools and made towards the spot where the boats were moored, to get their jackets and stockings and prepare for quitting the rock. What their feelings were when they found only a couple of boats there, and the tender drifting off with the other in tow, may be conceived. All the peril of their situation must have flashed across their minds as they looked across the raging sea, and saw the distance between the tender and the rock increasing every moment, while all around them the water rose higher and higher. In another hour, the waves would be rolling twelve feet and more above the crag on which they stood, and all hope of the tender being able to work round to them was being quickly dissipated. They watched the fleeting vessel and the rising tide, and their hearts sank within them, but not a word was uttered. They stood silently counting their numbers and calculating the capacity of the boats; and then they turned their eyes upon their trusted leader, as if their last hope lay in his counsel. Stevenson never forgot the appalling solemnity of the moment. One chance, and but a slender one, of escape alone occurred to him. It was that, stripping themselves of their clothes, and divesting the two boats, as much as possible, of everything that weighted and enc.u.mbered them, so many men should take their seats in the boats, while the others hung on by the gunwales; and that they should then work their way, as best they could, towards either the tender or the floating barrack. Stevenson was about to explain this to his men, but found that all power of speech had left him. The anxiety of that dreadful moment had parched his throat, and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He stooped to one of the little pools at his feet to moisten his fevered lips with the salt water.

Suddenly a shout was raised, "A boat! A boat!" and through the haze a large pilot boat could dimly be discerned making towards the rock. The pilot had observed the _Smeaton_ drifting off, and, guessing at once the critical position of the workmen on the rock, had hastened to their relief.

Next morning when the bell sounded on board the barrack for the return to the rock, only eight out of the twenty-six workmen, beside the foreman and seamen, made their appearance on deck to accompany their leader. Mr. Stevenson saw it would be useless to argue with them then.

So he made no remark, and proceeded with the eight willing workmen to the rock, where they spent four hours at work. On returning to the barrack, the eighteen men who had remained on board appeared quite ashamed of their cowardice; and without a word being said to them, were the first to take their places in the boats when the bell rang again in the afternoon.

At length the barrack was completed, and the men were then relieved from the toil of rowing backwards and forwards between the tender and the rock, as well as from the constant sickness which tormented them on board the floating barrack. They were now able to prolong their labours, when the tide permitted, into the night. At such times the rock a.s.sumed a singularly picturesque and romantic aspect--its surface crowded with men in all variety of att.i.tudes, the two forges and numerous torches lighting up the scene, and throwing a lurid gleam across the waters, and the loud dong of the anvils mingling with the dashing of the breakers.

On the 18th July 1808, the site having been properly excavated, the first stone of the lighthouse was laid by the Duke of Argyle; and by the end of the second season some five or six feet of building had been erected, and were left to the mercy of the waves till the ensuing spring. The third season's operations raised the masonry to a height of thirty feet above the sea, and the fourth season saw the completion of the tower. On the first night in February of the succeeding year (1811) the lamp was lit, and beamed forth across the waters.

The Bell Rock Tower is 100 feet in height, 42 feet in diameter at the base, and 15 feet at the top. The door is 30 feet from the base, and the ascent is by a ma.s.sive bronze ladder. The "light" is revolving, and presents a white and red light alternately, by means of shades of red gla.s.s arranged in a frame. The machinery which causes the revolution of the lamp is also applied to the tolling of two large bells, in order to give warning to the mariner of his approach to the rock in foggy weather, thus reviving the traditional practice from which the rock takes its name.

III.--THE SKERRYVORE.

"Having crept upon deck about four in the morning, I find we are beating to windward off the Isle of Tyree, with the determination on the part of Mr. Stevenson that his const.i.tuents should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor, where he thought it would be essential to have a lighthouse. Loud remonstrances on the part of the commissioners, who one and all declare they will subscribe to his opinion, whatever it may be, rather than continue this dreadful buffeting. Quiet perseverance on the part of Mr. Stevenson, and great kicking, bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the yacht, who seems to like the idea of Skerry Vhor as little as the commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion, came in sight of this long range 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. We took possession of it in the name of the commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr. Stevenson. 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 14 miles distance."

Such is an entry in the diary of Sir Walter Scott's Yacht Tour, on the 27th August 1814; but although the necessity of a lighthouse on the Skerry Vhor, or, as it is now generally called, Skerryvore, was fully acknowledged by the authorities, it was not till twenty-four years afterwards that the undertaking was actually commenced, under the superintendence of Mr. Alan Stevenson, the son of the eminent engineer who erected the Bell Rock Lighthouse.

In the execution of this great work, if the son had, as compared with his father, certain advantages in his favour, he had also various disadvantages to contend with at Skerryvore from which the engineer of the Bell Rock was free. Mr. Alan Stevenson had steam power at his command, and the benefit of all the experience derived from the experiments of his predecessors in similar operations; but at the same time, the rock on which he had to work was at a greater distance from the land, and separated from it by a more dangerous pa.s.sage than that of either the Bell or the Eddystone; and the geological formation of which the rock is composed, was much more difficult to work upon. The Skerryvore is distant from Tyree, the nearest inhabited island, about 11 miles; even in fine weather the intervening pa.s.sage is a trying one, and in rough weather no ship can live in such a sea, studded as it is with treacherous rocks. The sandstone of the Bell Rock is worn into rugged inequalities, which favoured the operations of the engineer; but the action of the waves on the igneous formation of the Skerryvore has given it all the smoothness and slippery polish of a ma.s.s of dark coloured gla.s.s. Indeed, the foreman of the masons, on first visiting the rock, not unjustly compared the operation of ascending it to that of "climbing up the neck of a bottle."

The 7th August 1838 was the first day of entire work on the rock, and with succeeding ones was spent in the erection of a temporary barrack of wood, for the men to lodge in on the rock. It was completed before the season closed; but one of the first heavy gales in November wrenched it from its holdings, and swept it into the sea, leaving nothing to mark the site but a few broken and twisted stanchions, attached to one of which was a portion of a great beam which had been shaken and rent, by dashing against the rocks, into a bundle of ribands. Thus in one night were obliterated the results of a whole season's toil, and with them, the hopes the men cherished of having a dwelling on the rock, instead of on board the brig, where they suffered intensely from the miseries of constant sickness.

The excavation of the foundations occupied the whole of the summer season of 1839, from the 6th May to the 3d September. The hard, nitrified rock held out stoutly against the a.s.saults of both iron and gunpowder; and much time was spent in hollowing out the basin in which the lighthouse was to be fixed. From the limited extent of the rock and the absence of any place of shelter, the blasting was an operation of considerable danger, as the men had no place to run to, and it had to be managed with great caution. Only a small portion of the rock could be blown up at a time, and care had to be taken to cover the part over with mats and nettings made of old rope to check the flight of the stones.

The excavation of the flinty ma.s.s occupied nearly two summers.

The operations of 1840 included, much to the delight of the workmen, the reconstruction of the barrack, to which they were glad to remove from the tossing vessel. The second edifice was more substantial than the first, and proved more enduring. Rude and narrow as it was, it offered, after the discomforts of the vessel, almost a luxurious lodging to its hardy inmates.

"Packed 40 feet above the weather-beaten rock, in this singular abode,"

writes the engineer, Mr. Alan Stevenson, "with a goodly company of thirty men, I have spent many a weary day and night, at those times when the sea prevented any one going down to the rock, anxiously looking for supplies from the sh.o.r.e, and earnestly longing for a change of weather favourable to the recommencement of the works. For miles around nothing could be seen but white foaming breakers, and nothing heard but howling winds and lashing waves. Our slumbers, too, were at times fearfully interrupted by the sudden pouring of the sea over the roof, the rocking of the house on its pillars, and the spurting of water through the seams of the doors and windows; symptoms which, to one suddenly aroused from sound sleep, recalled the appalling fate of the former barrack, which had been engulphed in the foam not twenty yards from our dwelling, and for a moment seemed to summon us to a similar fate. On two occasions in particular, these sensations were so vivid as to cause almost every one to spring out of bed; and some of the men fled from the barrack by a temporary gangway to the more stable, but less comfortable shelter afforded by the bare walls of the lighthouse tower, then unfinished, where they spent the remainder of the night in the darkness and the cold."

In spite of their anxiety to get on with the work, and their intrepidity in availing themselves of every opportunity, these gallant men were often forced by stress of weather into an inactivity which we may be sure they felt sadly irksome and against the grain. "At such seasons,"

says Mr. Stevenson, "much of our time was spent in bed, for there alone we had effectual shelter from the winds and the spray which reached every cranny in the walls of our barrack." On one occasion they were for fourteen days without communication with the sh.o.r.e, and when at length the seas subsided, and they were able to make the signal to Tyree that a landing at the rock was practicable, scarcely twenty-four hours' stock of provisions remained on the rock. In spite of hardships and perils, however, the engineer declares that "life on the Skerryvore Rock was by no means dest.i.tute of its peculiar pleasures. The grandeur of the ocean's rage--the deep murmur of the waves--the hoa.r.s.e cry of the sea birds, which wheeled continually over us, especially at our meals--the low moaning of the wind--or the gorgeous brightness of a glossy sea and a cloudless sky--and the solemn stillness of a deep blue vault, studded with stars, or cheered by the splendours of the full moon,--were the phases of external things that often arrested our thoughts in a situation where, with all the bustle that sometimes prevailed, there was necessarily so much time for reflection. Those changes, together with the continual succession of hopes and fears connected with the important work in which we were engaged, and the oft recurring calls for advice or direction, as well as occasional hours devoted to reading and correspondence, and the pleasures of news from home, were more than sufficient to reconcile me to--nay, to make me really enjoy--an uninterrupted residence, on one occasion, of not less than five weeks on that desert rock."

The Skerryvore Lighthouse was at length successfully completed. The height of the tower is 138 feet 6 inches, of which the first 26 feet is solid. It contains a ma.s.s of stone work of more than double the quant.i.ty of the Bell Rock, and nearly five times that of the Eddystone. The entire cost, including steam tug and the building of a small harbour at Hynish for the reception of the little vessel that now attends the lighthouse, was 86,977. The light is revolving, and reaches its brightest state once every minute. It is produced by the revolution of eight great annular lenses around a central light, with four wicks, and can be seen from the deck of a vessel at the distance of 18 miles. Mr.

Alan Stevenson sums up his deeply interesting narrative in the following words: "In such a situation as the Skerryvore, innumerable delays and disappointments were to be expected by those engaged in the work; and the entire loss of the fruit of the first season's labour in the course of a few hours, was a good lesson in the school of patience, and of trust in something better than an arm of flesh. During our progress, also, cranes and other materials were swept away by the waves; vessels were driven by sudden gales to seek shelter at a distance from the rocky sh.o.r.es of Mull and Tyree; and the workmen were left on the rock desponding and idle, and dest.i.tute of many of the comforts with which a more roomy and sheltered dwelling, in the neighbourhood of friends, is generally connected. Daily risks were run in landing on the rock in a heavy surf, in blasting the splintery gneiss, or by the falling of heavy bodies from the tower on a narrow s.p.a.ce below, to which so many persons were necessarily confined. Yet had we not any loss of either life or limb; and although our labours were prolonged from dawn to night, and our provisions were chiefly salt, the health of the people, with the exception of a few slight cases of dysentery, was generally good throughout the six successive summers of our sojourn on the rock. The close of the work was welcomed with thankfulness by all engaged in it; and our remarkable preservation was viewed, even by many of the most thoughtless, as, in a peculiar manner, the gracious work of Him by whom the very hairs of our heads are all numbered!"

Steam Navigation.

I.--JAMES SYMINGTON.

II.--ROBERT FULTON.

III.--HENRY BELL.

IV.--OCEAN STEAMERS.

Steam Navigation.

I.--JAMES SYMINGTON.

Of the many triumphs of enterprise achieved by the agency of that tremendous power which James Watt tamed and put in harness for his race, perhaps the greatest and most momentous is that which has reversed the old proverb, that "time and tide wait for no man," given ten-fold meaning to the truth that "seas but join the regions they divide," and enabled our ships to dash across the trackless deep in spite of opposing elements,--

"Against wind, against tide, Steadying with upright keel,"

in a fraction of the time, and with a fraction of the cost and peril of the old mode of naval locomotion. How amply realized has been James Bell's prediction more than half a century ago, "I will venture to affirm that history does not afford an instance of such rapid improvement in commerce and civilization, as that which will be effected by steam vessels!"

Towards the close of the last century, a number of ingenious minds were in travail with the scheme of steam navigation. The Marquis de Jouffroy in France, and Fitch and Rumsey in America, were successful in experiments of its feasibility; but it is to the efforts of Miller and Symington in Scotland, followed up by those of Fulton and Bell, that we are chiefly and more immediately indebted for the practical development of the project.

Having a natural bent for mechanical contrivances, and abundance of leisure and money to indulge his tastes, Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire, somewhere about the year 1785, was full of schemes for driving ships by means of paddle-wheels,--by no means a novel idea, for it was known to the Romans, if not to the Egyptians, and had often been tried before.

All he aimed at originally was, to turn the wheels by the power of men or horses; and this he managed to do successfully enough. Single, double, and treble boats were often to be seen driving along Dalswinton Lake, moved by paddle-wheels instead of oars. On one occasion, at Leith, one of the double boats, sixty feet long, propelled by two wheels, each of which was turned by a couple of men, was matched against a Custom-house boat, which was reckoned a fast sailer. The paddle-wheels did duty very well; but the men were soon knocked up with turning them, and the want of some other motive power was strongly felt. A young man named Taylor, who was tutor to Mr. Miller's boys, is said to have suggested the use of steam; but whether this be so or not, it was not till Miller met with James Symington that the idea a.s.sumed a practical form.

In 1786 James Symington, then joint-engineer with his brother George, to the Wanlockhead Mines, was struck with the idea which, as we have seen, several other ingenious minds were also busy with about the same time,--of rendering the steam-engine available for locomotion both on land and sea. After much study and reflection, he succeeded in embodying the idea in a working model. It was supported on four wheels, which were moved in any direction by means of a small steam-engine, and could carry 16 cwt., besides coals, water, &c. It was exhibited in Edinburgh in the summer of 1786, and made a considerable sensation. Mr. Miller, fond of all such inventions, did not fail to get a sight of Symington's locomotive engine, the first time he was in town. He was delighted with its ingenuity and completeness, and procured an interview with the author. Of course, Miller was full of his own experiments, and told Symington the whole story of his efforts to propel vessels by paddle-wheels, and the want of some stronger, and more constant power than that of men to turn the capstan, upon which the motion of the wheels depended. Symington at once expressed the opinion he had formed,--that steam was equally available for vessels as for carriages, and showed him how the steam-engine which he had devised for his locomotive could be applied to the paddle-wheels. Miller was so much struck by his statements, which he ill.u.s.trated by reference to the model, that he determined to have an engine made on the same plan, and fitted into one of his double boats. Accordingly, an engine was built under Symington's directions and superintendence, sent to Dalswinton, and put together in October 1788. The engine, in a strong oak frame, was placed in the one half of a double pleasure-boat, the boiler occupying the other half, and the paddle-wheels being fixed in the middle.

The autumn was withering into winter, the yellow leaves were swirling to the ground with every little breath of wind, and the boughs were beginning to show forth bare and grim, when the little boat was launched upon the bosom of Dalswinton Loch. At length all the preparations were finished, and on the 14th November Mr. Miller had the delight of seeing the vessel gliding over the mimic waves of the lake at the rate of five miles an hour. The company on board the boat on that memorable occasion were--Mr. Miller himself, of course, nervous with pleasure and exultation; Taylor, the tutor; Alexander Nasmyth (the well-known landscape painter, and father of the man who, in the next generation, was to invent the wonderful steam-hammer, that knocks ma.s.ses of iron about like putty, and can yet so moderate its force as to crack a nut without bruising the kernel); a brisk stripling with strongly marked features, by name Harry Brougham, afterwards to be Lord Chancellor of England, and perhaps the most many-sided genius of his time; and--last and greatest of the group--there was one of Mr. Miller's tenants, the farmer of Ellisland,--Robert Burns, the great bard of Scotland, enjoying to the full, no doubt, the novelty of the expedition, but, we must suppose, unconscious of its import and grand future consequences, since he has accorded it no commemorative verse. "Many a time," says Mr. James Nasmyth, son of the distinguished painter, "I have heard my father describe the delight which this first and successful essay at steam navigation yielded the party in question. I only wish Burns had immortalized it in fit, clinking rhyme, for, indeed, it was a subject worthy of his highest muse."

The experiment was next tried on a large scale with a ca.n.a.l boat, on the Forth and Clyde Ca.n.a.l, but one of the wheels broke. Not to be balked, Symington had stronger wheels made, and the next time the steam was put on, the vessel went off at the rate of seven miles an hour. The experiment was several times repeated with success. The vessel, however, was so slight, that many more trips would have knocked it to pieces; and it was therefore dismantled. The fitting up of these vessels, and the working of them, formed a heavy drain upon Mr. Miller's purse; and having laid satisfactory proof before the world that the thing could be done, he relinquished the enterprise, and left it to be worked out by others. Just then, however, no one came forward to fill his place; and for some years the idea slumbered.

In 1801 Symington could not afford to indulge in further efforts at his own expense, but he found a patron in Lord Dundas, who commissioned him to construct a steam-tug for dragging ca.n.a.l boats. A stout, serviceable tug was built; and a series of experiments entered upon to test her efficiency, which cost upwards of 3000. One bleak, stormy spring-day in 1802, the people on the banks of the Forth and Clyde Ca.n.a.l might have been seen staring with wonder, at the short, stumpy little tug pushing gallantly on at the rate of three or four miles an hour, with a strong wind right in her teeth, that no other vessel could make head against, and two loaded vessels (each of more than 70 tons burden) in tow. By itself, the tug could do six miles an hour without any great strain. The company made some objection, however, about the banks of the ca.n.a.l being injured, and the tug fell into disuse. It served an important end, though, in giving both Fulton and Bell a basis for their operations, and must be considered the parent of our modern steam-craft.