There is the great word out.  Tales and Tale-bearing, always with
the emphatic capitals, run continually in his correspondence.  I
will give but two instances:-

'Write to David [one of the lightkeepers] and caution him to be
more prudent how he expresses himself.  Let him attend his duty to
the Lighthouse and his family concerns, and give less heed to Tale-
bearers.'  'I have not your last letter at hand to quote its date;
but, if I recollect, it contains some kind of tales, which nonsense
I wish you would lay aside, and notice only the concerns of your
family and the important charge committed to you.'

Apparently, however, my grandfather was not himself inaccessible to
the Tale-bearer, as the following indicates:

'In walking along with Mr. --- , I explain to him that I should be
under the necessity of looking more closely into the business here
from his conduct at Buddonness, which had given an instance of
weakness in the Moral principle which had staggered my opinion of
him.  His answer was, "That will be with regard to the lass?"  I
told him I was to enter no farther with him upon the subject.'
'Mr. Miller appears to be master and man.  I am sorry about this
foolish fellow.  Had I known his train, I should not, as I did,
have rather forced him into the service.  Upon finding the windows
in the state they were, I turned upon Mr. Watt, and especially upon
Mr. Stewart.  The latter did not appear for a length of time to
have visited the light-room.  On asking the cause--did Mr. Watt and
him (sic) disagree; he said no; but he had got very bad usage from
the assistant, "who was a very obstreperous man."  I could not
bring Mr. Watt to put in language his objections to Miller; all I
could get was that, he being your friend, and saying he was unwell,
he did not like to complain or to push the man; that the man seemed
to have no liking to anything like work; that he was unruly; that,
being an educated man, he despised them.  I was, however,
determined to have out of these UNWILLING witnesses the language
alluded to.  I fixed upon Mr. Stewart as chief; he hedged.  My
curiosity increased, and I urged.  Then he said, "What would I
think, just exactly, of Mr. Watt being called an Old B-?"  You may
judge of my surprise.  There was not another word uttered.  This
was quite enough, as coming from a person I should have calculated
upon quite different behaviour from.  It spoke a volume of the
man's mind and want of principle.'  'Object to the keeper keeping a
Bull-Terrier dog of ferocious appearance.  It is dangerous, as we
land at all times of the night.'  'Have only to complain of the
storehouse floor being spotted with oil.  Give orders for this
being instantly rectified, so that on my return to-morrow I may see
things in good order.'  'The furniture of both houses wants much
rubbing.  Mrs. -'s carpets are absurd beyond anything I have seen.
I want her to turn the fenders up with the bottom to the fireplace:
the carpets, when not likely to be in use, folded up and laid as a
hearthrug partly under the fender.'

My grandfather was king in the service to his finger-tips.  All
should go in his way, from the principal lightkeeper's coat to the
assistant's fender, from the gravel in the garden-walks to the bad
smell in the kitchen, or the oil-spots on the store-room floor.  It
might be thought there was nothing more calculated to awake men's
resentment, and yet his rule was not more thorough than it was
beneficent.  His thought for the keepers was continual, and it did
not end with their lives.  He tried to manage their successions; he
thought no pains too great to arrange between a widow and a son who
had succeeded his father; he was often harassed and perplexed by
tales of hardship; and I find him writing, almost in despair, of
their improvident habits and the destitution that awaited their
families upon a death.  'The house being completely furnished, they
come into possession without necessaries, and they go out NAKED.
The insurance seems to have failed, and what next is to be tried?'
While they lived he wrote behind their backs to arrange for the
education of their children, or to get them other situations if
they seemed unsuitable for the Northern Lights.  When he was at a
lighthouse on a Sunday he held prayers and heard the children read.
When a keeper was sick, he lent him his horse and sent him mutton
and brandy from the ship.  'The assistant's wife having been this
morning confined, there was sent ashore a bottle of sherry and a
few rusks--a practice which I have always observed in this
service,' he writes.  They dwelt, many of them, in uninhabited
isles or desert forelands, totally cut off from shops.  Many of
them were, besides, fallen into a rustic dishabitude of life, so
that even when they visited a city they could scarce be trusted
with their own affairs, as (for example) he who carried home to his
children, thinking they were oranges, a bag of lemons.  And my
grandfather seems to have acted, at least in his early years, as a
kind of gratuitous agent for the service.  Thus I find him writing
to a keeper in 1806, when his mind was already preoccupied with
arrangements for the Bell Rock:  'I am much afraid I stand very
unfavourably with you as a man of promise, as I was to send several
things of which I believe I have more than once got the memorandum.
All I can say is that in this respect you are not singular.  This
makes me no better; but really I have been driven about beyond all
example in my past experience, and have been essentially obliged to
neglect my own urgent affairs.'  No servant of the Northern Lights
came to Edinburgh but he was entertained at Baxter's Place to
breakfast.  There, at his own table, my grandfather sat down
delightedly with his broad-spoken, homespun officers.  His whole
relation to the service was, in fact, patriarchal; and I believe I
may say that throughout its ranks he was adored.  I have spoken
with many who knew him; I was his grandson, and their words may
have very well been words of flattery; but there was one thing that
could not be affected, and that was the look and light that came
into their faces at the name of Robert Stevenson.

In the early part of the century the foreman builder was a young
man of the name of George Peebles, a native of Anstruther.  My
grandfather had placed in him a very high degree of confidence, and
he was already designated to be foreman at the Bell Rock, when, on
Christmas-day 1806, on his way home from Orkney, he was lost in the
schooner Traveller.  The tale of the loss of the Traveller is
almost a replica of that of the Elizabeth of Stromness; like the
Elizabeth she came as far as Kinnaird Head, was then surprised by a
storm, driven back to Orkney, and bilged and sank on the island of
Flotta.  It seems it was about the dusk of the day when the ship
struck, and many of the crew and passengers were drowned.  About
the same hour, my grandfather was in his office at the writing-
table; and the room beginning to darken, he laid down his pen and
fell asleep.  In a dream he saw the door open and George Peebles
come in, 'reeling to and fro, and staggering like a drunken man,'
with water streaming from his head and body to the floor.  There it
gathered into a wave which, sweeping forward, submerged my
grandfather.  Well, no matter how deep; versions vary; and at last
he awoke, and behold it was a dream!  But it may be conceived how
profoundly the impression was written even on the mind of a man
averse from such ideas, when the news came of the wreck on Flotta
and the death of George.

George's vouchers and accounts had perished with himself; and it
appeared he was in debt to the Commissioners.  But my grandfather
wrote to Orkney twice, collected evidence of his disbursements, and
proved him to be seventy pounds ahead.  With this sum, he applied
to George's brothers, and had it apportioned between their mother
and themselves.  He approached the Board and got an annuity of 5
pounds bestowed on the widow Peebles; and we find him writing her a
long letter of explanation and advice, and pressing on her the duty
of making a will.  That he should thus act executor was no singular
instance.  But besides this we are able to assist at some of the
stages of a rather touching experiment; no less than an attempt to
secure Charles Peebles heir to George's favour.  He is despatched,
under the character of 'a fine young man'; recommended to gentlemen
for 'advice, as he's a stranger in your place, and indeed to this
kind of charge, this being his first outset as Foreman'; and for a
long while after, the letter-book, in the midst of that thrilling
first year of the Bell Rock, is encumbered with pages of
instruction and encouragement.  The nature of a bill, and the
precautions that are to be observed about discounting it, are
expounded at length and with clearness.  'You are not, I hope,
neglecting, Charles, to work the harbour at spring-tides; and see
that you pay the greatest attention to get the well so as to supply
the keeper with water, for he is a very helpless fellow, and so
unfond of hard work that I fear he could do ill to keep himself in
water by going to the other side for it.'--'With regard to spirits,
Charles, I see very little occasion for it.'  These abrupt
apostrophes sound to me like the voice of an awakened conscience;
but they would seem to have reverberated in vain in the ears of
Charles.  There was trouble in Pladda, his scene of operations; his
men ran away from him, there was at least a talk of calling in the
Sheriff.  'I fear,' writes my grandfather, 'you have been too
indulgent, and I am sorry to add that men do not answer to be too
well treated, a circumstance which I have experienced, and which
you will learn as you go on in business.'  I wonder, was not
Charles Peebles himself a case in point?  Either death, at least,
or disappointment and discharge, must have ended his service in the
Northern Lights; and in later correspondence I look in vain for any
mention of his name--Charles, I mean, not Peebles:  for as late as
1839 my grandfather is patiently writing to another of the family:
'I am sorry you took the trouble of applying to me about your son,
as it lies quite out of my way to forward his views in the line of
his profession as a Draper.'


III


A professional life of Robert Stevenson has been already given to
the world by his son David, and to that I would refer those
interested in such matters.  But my own design, which is to
represent the man, would be very ill carried out if I suffered
myself or my reader to forget that he was, first of all and last of
all, an engineer.  His chief claim to the style of a mechanical
inventor is on account of the Jib or Balance Crane of the Bell
Rock, which are beautiful contrivances.  But the great merit of
this engineer was not in the field of engines.  He was above all
things a projector of works in the face of nature, and a modifier
of nature itself.  A road to be made, a tower to be built, a
harbour to be constructed, a river to be trained and guided in its
channel--these were the problems with which his mind was
continually occupied; and for these and similar ends he travelled
the world for more than half a century, like an artist, note-book
in hand.

He once stood and looked on at the emptying of a certain oil-tube;
he did so watch in hand, and accurately timed the operation; and in
so doing offered the perfect type of his profession.  The fact
acquired might never be of use:  it was acquired:  another link in
the world's huge chain of processes was brought down to figures and
placed at the service of the engineer.  'The very term mensuration
sounds ENGINEER-LIKE,' I find him writing; and in truth what the
engineer most properly deals with is that which can be measured,
weighed, and numbered.  The time of any operation in hours and
minutes, its cost in pounds, shillings, and pence, the strain upon
a given point in foot-pounds--these are his conquests, with which
he must continually furnish his mind, and which, after he has
acquired them, he must continually apply and exercise.  They must
be not only entries in note-books, to be hurriedly consulted; in
the actor's phrase, he must be STALE in them; in a word of my
grandfather's, they must be 'fixed in the mind like the ten fingers
and ten toes.'

These are the certainties of the engineer; so far he finds a solid
footing and clear views.  But the province of formulas and
constants is restricted.  Even the mechanical engineer comes at
last to an end of his figures, and must stand up, a practical man,
face to face with the discrepancies of nature and the hiatuses of
theory.  After the machine is finished, and the steam turned on,
the next is to drive it; and experience and an exquisite sympathy
must teach him where a weight should be applied or a nut loosened.
With the civil engineer, more properly so called (if anything can
be proper with this awkward coinage), the obligation starts with
the beginning.  He is always the practical man.  The rains, the
winds and the waves, the complexity and the fitfulness of nature,
are always before him.  He has to deal with the unpredictable, with
those forces (in Smeaton's phrase) that 'are subject to no
calculation'; and still he must predict, still calculate them, at
his peril.  His work is not yet in being, and he must foresee its
influence:  how it shall deflect the tide, exaggerate the waves,
dam back the rain-water, or attract the thunderbolt.  He visits a
piece of sea-board; and from the inclination and soil of the beach,
from the weeds and shell-fish, from the configuration of the coast
and the depth of soundings outside, he must deduce what magnitude
of waves is to be looked for.  He visits a river, its summer water
babbling on shallows; and he must not only read, in a thousand
indications, the measure of winter freshets, but be able to predict
the violence of occasional great floods.  Nay, and more; he must
not only consider that which is, but that which may be.  Thus I
find my grandfather writing, in a report on the North Esk Bridge:
'A less waterway might have sufficed, but the VALLEYS MAY COME TO
BE MELIORATED BY DRAINAGE.'  One field drained after another
through all that confluence of vales, and we come to a time when
they shall precipitate by so much a more copious and transient
flood, as the gush of the flowing drain-pipe is superior to the
leakage of a peat.

It is plain there is here but a restricted use for formulas.  In
this sort of practice, the engineer has need of some transcendental
sense.  Smeaton, the pioneer, bade him obey his 'feelings'; my
father, that 'power of estimating obscure forces which supplies a
coefficient of its own to every rule.'  The rules must be
everywhere indeed; but they must everywhere be modified by this
transcendental coefficient, everywhere bent to the impression of
the trained eye and the FEELINGS of the engineer.  A sentiment of
physical laws and of the scale of nature, which shall have been
strong in the beginning and progressively fortified by observation,
must be his guide in the last recourse.  I had the most opportunity
to observe my father.  He would pass hours on the beach, brooding
over the waves, counting them, noting their least deflection,
noting when they broke.  On Tweedside, or by Lyne or Manor, we have
spent together whole afternoons; to me, at the time, extremely
wearisome; to him, as I am now sorry to think, bitterly mortifying.
The river was to me a pretty and various spectacle; I could not
see--I could not be made to see--it otherwise.  To my father it was
a chequer-board of lively forces, which he traced from pool to
shallow with minute appreciation and enduring interest.  'That bank
was being under-cut,' he might say.  'Why?  Suppose you were to put
a groin out here, would not the filum fluminis be cast abruptly off
across the channel? and where would it impinge upon the other
shore? and what would be the result?  Or suppose you were to blast
that boulder, what would happen?  Follow it--use the eyes God has
given you--can you not see that a great deal of land would be
reclaimed upon this side?'  It was to me like school in holidays;
but to him, until I had worn him out with my invincible triviality,
a delight.  Thus he pored over the engineer's voluminous handy-book
of nature; thus must, too, have pored my grand-father and uncles.

But it is of the essence of this knowledge, or this knack of mind,
to be largely incommunicable.  'It cannot be imparted to another,'
says my father.  The verbal casting-net is thrown in vain over
these evanescent, inferential relations. Hence the insignificance
of much engineering literature.  So far as the science can be
reduced to formulas or diagrams, the book is to the point; so far
as the art depends on intimate study of the ways of nature, the
author's words will too often be found vapid.  This fact--that
engineering looks one way, and literature another--was what my
grand-father overlooked.  All his life long, his pen was in his
hand, piling up a treasury of knowledge, preparing himself against
all possible contingencies.  Scarce anything fell under his notice
but he perceived in it some relation to his work, and chronicled it
in the pages of his journal in his always lucid, but sometimes
inexact and wordy, style.  The Travelling Diary (so he called it)
was kept in fascicles of ruled paper, which were at last bound up,
rudely indexed, and put by for future reference.  Such volumes as
have reached me contain a surprising medley:  the whole details of
his employment in the Northern Lights and his general practice; the
whole biography of an enthusiastic engineer.  Much of it is useful
and curious; much merely otiose; and much can only be described as
an attempt to impart that which cannot be imparted in words.  Of
such are his repeated and heroic descriptions of reefs; monuments
of misdirected literary energy, which leave upon the mind of the
reader no effect but that of a multiplicity of words and the
suggested vignette of a lusty old gentleman scrambling among
tangle.  It is to be remembered that he came to engineering while
yet it was in the egg and without a library, and that he saw the
bounds of that profession widen daily.  He saw iron ships,
steamers, and the locomotive engine, introduced.  He lived to
travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh in the inside of a forenoon, and
to remember that he himself had 'often been twelve hours upon the
journey, and his grand-father (Lillie) two days'!  The profession
was still but in its second generation, and had already broken down
the barriers of time and space.  Who should set a limit to its
future encroachments?  And hence, with a kind of sanguine pedantry,
he pursued his design of 'keeping up with the day' and posting
himself and his family on every mortal subject.  Of this
unpractical idealism we shall meet with many instances; there was
not a trade, and scarce an accomplishment, but he thought it should
form part of the outfit of an engineer; and not content with
keeping an encyclopaedic diary himself, he would fain have set all
his sons to work continuing and extending it.  They were more
happily inspired.  My father's engineering pocket-book was not a
bulky volume; with its store of pregnant notes and vital formulas,
it served him through life, and was not yet filled when he came to
die.  As for Robert Stevenson and the Travelling Diary, I should be
ungrateful to complain, for it has supplied me with many lively
traits for this and subsequent chapters; but I must still remember
much of the period of my study there as a sojourn in the Valley of
the Shadow.

The duty of the engineer is twofold--to design the work, and to see
the work done.  We have seen already something of the vociferous
thoroughness of the man, upon the cleaning of lamps and the
polishing of reflectors.  In building, in road-making, in the
construction of bridges, in every detail and byway of his
employments, he pursued the same ideal.  Perfection (with a capital
P and violently under-scored) was his design.  A crack for a
penknife, the waste of 'six-and-thirty shillings,' 'the loss of a
day or a tide,' in each of these he saw and was revolted by the
finger of the sloven; and to spirits intense as his, and immersed
in vital undertakings, the slovenly is the dishonest, and wasted
time is instantly translated into lives endangered.  On this
consistent idealism there is but one thing that now and then
trenches with a touch of incongruity, and that is his love of the
picturesque.  As when he laid out a road on Hogarth's line of
beauty; bade a foreman be careful, in quarrying, not 'to disfigure
the island'; or regretted in a report that 'the great stone, called
the Devil in the Hole, was blasted or broken down to make road-
metal, and for other purposes of the work.'



CHAPTER III:  THE BUILDING OF THE BELL ROCK



Off the mouths of the Tay and the Forth, thirteen miles from
Fifeness, eleven from Arbroath, and fourteen from the Red Head of
Angus, lies the Inchcape or Bell Rock.  It extends to a length of
about fourteen hundred feet, but the part of it discovered at low
water to not more than four hundred and twenty-seven.  At a little
more than half-flood in fine weather the seamless ocean joins over
the reef, and at high-water springs it is buried sixteen feet.  As
the tide goes down, the higher reaches of the rock are seen to be
clothed by Conferva rupestris as by a sward of grass; upon the more
exposed edges, where the currents are most swift and the breach of
the sea heaviest, Baderlock or Henware flourishes; and the great
Tangle grows at the depth of several fathoms with luxuriance.
Before man arrived, and introduced into the silence of the sea the
smoke and clangour of a blacksmith's shop, it was a favourite
resting-place of seals.  The crab and lobster haunt in the
crevices; and limpets, mussels, and the white buckie abound.

According to a tradition, a bell had been once hung upon this rock
by an abbot of Arbroath, {91a} 'and being taken down by a sea-
pirate, a year thereafter he perished upon the same rock, with ship
and goods, in the righteous judgment of God.'  From the days of the
abbot and the sea-pirate no man had set foot upon the Inchcape,
save fishers from the neighbouring coast, or perhaps--for a moment,
before the surges swallowed them--the unfortunate victims of
shipwreck.  The fishers approached the rock with an extreme
timidity; but their harvest appears to have been great, and the
adventure no more perilous than lucrative.  In 1800, on the
occasion of my grandfather's first landing, and during the two or
three hours which the ebb-tide and the smooth water allowed them to
pass upon its shelves, his crew collected upwards of two
hundredweight of old metal:  pieces of a kedge anchor and a cabin
stove, crowbars, a hinge and lock of a door, a ship's marking-iron,
a piece of a ship's caboose, a soldier's bayonet, a cannon ball,
several pieces of money, a shoe-buckle, and the like.  Such were
the spoils of the Bell Rock.

From 1794 onward, the mind of my grandfather had been exercised
with the idea of a light upon this formidable danger.  To build a
tower on a sea rock, eleven miles from shore, and barely uncovered
at low water of neaps, appeared a fascinating enterprise.  It was
something yet unattempted, unessayed; and even now, after it has
been lighted for more than eighty years, it is still an exploit
that has never been repeated. {92a}  My grandfather was, besides,
but a young man, of an experience comparatively restricted, and a
reputation confined to Scotland; and when he prepared his first
models, and exhibited them in Merchants' Hall, he can hardly be
acquitted of audacity.  John Clerk of Eldin stood his friend from
the beginning, kept the key of the model room, to which he carried
'eminent strangers,' and found words of counsel and encouragement
beyond price.  'Mr. Clerk had been personally known to Smeaton, and
used occasionally to speak of him to me,' says my grandfather; and
again:  'I felt regret that I had not the opportunity of a greater
range of practice to fit me for such an undertaking; but I was
fortified by an expression of my friend Mr. Clerk in one of our
conversations. "This work," said he, "is unique, and can be little
forwarded by experience of ordinary masonic operations.  In this
case Smeaton's 'Narrative' must be the text-book, and energy and
perseverance the pratique."'

A Bill for the work was introduced into Parliament and lost in the
Lords in 1802-3.  John Rennie was afterwards, at my grandfather's
suggestion, called in council, with the style of chief engineer.
The precise meaning attached to these words by any of the parties
appears irrecoverable.  Chief engineer should have full authority,
full responsibility, and a proper share of the emoluments; and
there were none of these for Rennie.  I find in an appendix a paper
which resumes the controversy on this subject; and it will be
enough to say here that Rennie did not design the Bell Rock, that
he did not execute it, and that he was not paid for it. {94a}  From
so much of the correspondence as has come down to me, the
acquaintance of this man, eleven years his senior, and already
famous, appears to have been both useful and agreeable to Robert
Stevenson.  It is amusing to find my grandfather seeking high and
low for a brace of pistols which his colleague had lost by the way
between Aberdeen and Edinburgh; and writing to Messrs. Dollond, 'I
have not thought it necessary to trouble Mr. Rennie with this
order, but I BEG YOU WILL SEE TO GET TWO MINUTES OF HIM AS HE
PASSES YOUR DOOR'--a proposal calculated rather from the latitude
of Edinburgh than from London, even in 1807.  It is pretty, too, to
observe with what affectionate regard Smeaton was held in mind by
his immediate successors.  'Poor old fellow,' writes Rennie to
Stevenson, 'I hope he will now and then take a peep at us, and
inspire you with fortitude and courage to brave all difficulties
and dangers to accomplish a work which will, if successful,
immortalise you in the annals of fame.'  The style might be
bettered, but the sentiment is charming.

Smeaton was, indeed, the patron saint of the Bell Rock.  Undeterred
by the sinister fate of Winstanley, he had tackled and solved the
problem of the Eddystone; but his solution had not been in all
respects perfect.  It remained for my grand-father to outdo him in
daring, by applying to a tidal rock those principles which had been
already justified by the success of the Eddystone, and to perfect
the model by more than one exemplary departure.  Smeaton had
adopted in his floors the principle of the arch; each therefore
exercised an outward thrust upon the walls, which must be met and
combated by embedded chains.  My grandfather's flooring-stones, on
the other hand, were flat, made part of the outer wall, and were
keyed and dovetailed into a central stone, so as to bind the work
together and be positive elements of strength.  In 1703 Winstanley
still thought it possible to erect his strange pagoda, with its
open gallery, its florid scrolls and candlesticks:  like a rich
man's folly for an ornamental water in a park.  Smeaton followed;
then Stevenson in his turn corrected such flaws as were left in
Smeaton's design; and with his improvements, it is not too much to
say the model was made perfect.  Smeaton and Stevenson had between
them evolved and finished the sea-tower.  No subsequent builder has
departed in anything essential from the principles of their design.
It remains, and it seems to us as though it must remain for ever,
an ideal attained.  Every stone in the building, it may interest
the reader to know, my grandfather had himself cut out in the
model; and the manner in which the courses were fitted, joggled,
trenailed, wedged, and the bond broken, is intricate as a puzzle
and beautiful by ingenuity.

In 1806 a second Bill passed both Houses, and the preliminary works
were at once begun.  The same year the Navy had taken a great
harvest of prizes in the North Sea, one of which, a Prussian
fishing dogger, flat-bottomed and rounded at the stem and stern,
was purchased to be a floating lightship, and re-named the Pharos.
By July 1807 she was overhauled, rigged for her new purpose, and
turned into the lee of the Isle of May.  'It was proposed that the
whole party should meet in her and pass the night; but she rolled
from side to side in so extraordinary a manner, that even the most
seahardy fled.  It was humorously observed of this vessel that she
was in danger of making a round turn and appearing with her keel
uppermost; and that she would even turn a half-penny if laid upon
deck.'  By two o'clock on the morning of the 15th July this
purgatorial vessel was moored by the Bell Rock.

A sloop of forty tons had been in the meantime built at Leith, and
named the Smeaton; by the 7th of August my grandfather set sail in
her -

'carrying with him Mr. Peter Logan, foreman builder, and five
artificers selected from their having been somewhat accustomed to
the sea, the writer being aware of the distressing trial which the
floating light would necessarily inflict upon landsmen from her
rolling motion.  Here he remained till the 10th, and, as the
weather was favourable, a landing was effected daily, when the
workmen were employed in cutting the large seaweed from the sites
of the lighthouse and beacon, which were respectively traced with
pickaxes upon the rock.  In the meantime the crew of the Smeaton
was employed in laying down the several sets of moorings within
about half a mile of the rock for the convenience of vessels.  The
artificers, having, fortunately, experienced moderate weather,
returned to the workyard of Arbroath with a good report of their
treatment afloat; when their comrades ashore began to feel some
anxiety to see a place of which they had heard so much, and to
change the constant operations with the iron and mallet in the
process of hewing for an occasional tide's work on the rock, which
they figured to themselves as a state of comparative ease and
comfort.'

I am now for many pages to let my grandfather speak for himself,
and tell in his own words the story of his capital achievement.
The tall quarto of 533 pages from which the following narrative has
been dug out is practically unknown to the general reader, yet good
judges have perceived its merit, and it has been named (with
flattering wit) 'The Romance of Stone and Lime' and 'The Robinson
Crusoe of Civil Engineering.'  The tower was but four years in the
building; it took Robert Stevenson, in the midst of his many
avocations, no less than fourteen to prepare the Account.  The
title-page is a solid piece of literature of upwards of a hundred
words; the table of contents runs to thirteen pages; and the
dedication (to that revered monarch, George IV) must have cost him
no little study and correspondence.  Walter Scott was called in
council, and offered one miscorrection which still blots the page.
In spite of all this pondering and filing, there remain pages not
easy to construe, and inconsistencies not easy to explain away.  I
have sought to make these disappear, and to lighten a little the
baggage with which my grandfather marches; here and there I have
rejointed and rearranged a sentence, always with his own words, and
all with a reverent and faithful hand; and I offer here to the
reader the true Monument of Robert Stevenson with a little of the
moss removed from the inscription, and the Portrait of the artist
with some superfluous canvas cut away.


I--OPERATIONS OF 1807


[Sunday, 16th Aug.]

Everything being arranged for sailing to the rock on Saturday the
15th, the vessel might have proceeded on the Sunday; but
understanding that this would not be so agreeable to the artificers
it was deferred until Monday.  Here we cannot help observing that
the men allotted for the operations at the rock seemed to enter
upon the undertaking with a degree of consideration which fully
marked their opinion as to the hazardous nature of the undertaking
on which they were about to enter.  They went in a body to church
on Sunday, and whether it was in the ordinary course, or designed
for the occasion, the writer is not certain, but the service was,
in many respects, suitable to their circumstances.

[Monday, 17th Aug.]

The tide happening to fall late in the evening of Monday the 17th,
the party, counting twenty-four in number, embarked on board of the
Smeaton about ten o'clock p.m., and sailed from Arbroath with a
gentle breeze at west.  Our ship's colours having been flying all
day in compliment to the commencement of the work, the other
vessels in the harbour also saluted, which made a very gay
appearance.  A number of the friends and acquaintances of those on
board having been thus collected, the piers, though at a late hour,
were perfectly crowded, and just as the Smeaton cleared the
harbour, all on board united in giving three hearty cheers, which
were returned by those on shore in such good earnest, that, in the
still of the evening, the sound must have been heard in all parts
of the town, re-echoing from the walls and lofty turrets of the
venerable Abbey of Aberbrothwick.  The writer felt much
satisfaction at the manner of this parting scene, though he must
own that the present rejoicing was, on his part, mingled with
occasional reflections upon the responsibility of his situation,
which extended to the safety of all who should be engaged in this
perilous work.  With such sensations he retired to his cabin; but
as the artificers were rather inclined to move about the deck than
to remain in their confined berths below, his repose was transient,
and the vessel being small every motion was necessarily heard.
Some who were musically inclined occasionally sung; but he listened
with peculiar pleasure to the sailor at the helm, who hummed over
Dibdin's characteristic air:-

'They say there's a Providence sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.'

[Tuesday, 18th Aug.]

The weather had been very gentle all night, and, about four in the
morning of the 18th, the Smeaton anchored.  Agreeably to an
arranged plan of operations, all hands were called at five o'clock
a.m., just as the highest part of the Bell Rock began to show its
sable head among the light breakers, which occasionally whitened
with the foaming sea.  The two boats belonging to the floating
light attended the Smeaton, to carry the artificers to the rock, as
her boat could only accommodate about six or eight sitters.  Every
one was more eager than his neighbour to leap into the boats and it
required a good deal of management on the part of the coxswains to
get men unaccustomed to a boat to take their places for rowing and
at the same time trimming her properly.  The landing-master and
foreman went into one boat, while the writer took charge of
another, and steered it to and from the rock.  This became the more
necessary in the early stages of the work, as places could not be
spared for more than two, or at most three seamen to each boat, who
were always stationed, one at the bow, to use the boat-hook in
fending or pushing off, and the other at the aftermost oar, to give
the proper time in rowing, while the middle oars were double-
banked, and rowed by the artificers.

As the weather was extremely fine, with light airs of wind from the
east, we landed without difficulty upon the central part of the
rock at half-past five, but the water had not yet sufficiently left
it for commencing the work.  This interval, however, did not pass
unoccupied.  The first and last of all the principal operations at
the Bell Rock were accompanied by three hearty cheers from all
hands, and, on occasions like the present, the steward of the ship
attended, when each man was regaled with a glass of rum.  As the
water left the rock about six, some began to bore the holes for the
great bats or holdfasts, for fixing the beams of the Beacon-house,
while the smith was fully attended in laying out the site of his
forge, upon a somewhat sheltered spot of the rock, which also
recommended itself from the vicinity of a pool of water for
tempering his irons.  These preliminary steps occupied about an
hour, and as nothing further could be done during this tide towards
fixing the forge, the workmen gratified their curiosity by roaming
about the rock, which they investigated with great eagerness till
the tide overflowed it.  Those who had been sick picked dulse
(Fucus palmatus), which they ate with much seeming appetite; others
were more intent upon collecting limpets for bait, to enjoy the
amusement of fishing when they returned on board of the vessel.
Indeed, none came away empty-handed, as everything found upon the
Bell Rock was considered valuable, being connected with some
interesting association.  Several coins, and numerous bits of
shipwrecked iron, were picked up, of almost every description; and,
in particular, a marking-iron lettered JAMES--a circumstance of
which it was thought proper to give notice to the public, as it
might lead to the knowledge of some unfortunate shipwreck, perhaps
unheard of till this simple occurrence led to the discovery.  When
the rock began to be overflowed, the landing-master arranged the
crews of the respective boats, appointing twelve persons to each.
According to a rule which the writer had laid down to himself, he
was always the last person who left the rock.

In a short time the Bell Rock was laid completely under water, and
the weather being extremely fine, the sea was so smooth that its
place could not be pointed out from the appearance of the surface--
a circumstance which sufficiently demonstrates the dangerous nature
of this rock, even during the day, and in the smoothest and calmest
state of the sea.  During the interval between the morning and the
evening tides, the artificers were variously employed in fishing
and reading; others were busy in drying and adjusting their wet
clothes, and one or two amused their companions with the violin and
German flute.

About seven in the evening the signal bell for landing on the rock
was again rung, when every man was at his quarters.  In this
service it was thought more appropriate to use the bell than to
PIPE to quarters, as the use of this instrument is less known to
the mechanic than the sound of the bell.  The landing, as in the
morning, was at the eastern harbour.  During this tide the seaweed
was pretty well cleared from the site of the operations, and also
from the tracks leading to the different landing-places; for
walking upon the rugged surface of the Bell Rock, when covered with
seaweed, was found to be extremely difficult and even dangerous.
Every hand that could possibly be occupied now employed in
assisting the smith to fit up the apparatus for his forge.  At 9
p.m. the boats returned to the tender, after other two hours' work,
in the same order as formerly--perhaps as much gratified with the
success that attended the work of this day as with any other in the
whole course of the operations.  Although it could not he said that
the fatigues of this day had been great, yet all on board retired
early to rest.  The sea being calm, and no movement on deck, it was
pretty generally remarked in the morning that the bell awakened the
greater number on board from their first sleep; and though this
observation was not altogether applicable to the writer himself,
yet he was not a little pleased to find that thirty people could
all at once become so reconciled to a night's quarters within a few
hundred paces of the Bell Rock.

[Wednesday, 19th Aug.]

Being extremely anxious at this time to get forward with fixing the
smith's forge, on which the progress of the work at present
depended, the writer requested that he might be called at daybreak
to learn the landing-master's opinion of the weather from the
appearance of the rising sun, a criterion by which experienced
seamen can generally judge pretty accurately of the state of the
weather for the following day.  About five o'clock, on coming upon
deck, the sun's upper limb or disc had just begun to appear as if
rising from the ocean, and in less than a minute he was seen in the
fullest splendour; but after a short interval he was enveloped in a
soft cloudy sky, which was considered emblematical of fine weather.
His rays had not yet sufficiently dispelled the clouds which hid
the land from view, and the Bell Rock being still overflowed, the
whole was one expanse of water.  This scene in itself was highly
gratifying; and, when the morning bell was tolled, we were
gratified with the happy forebodings of good weather and the
expectation of having both a morning and an evening tide's work on
the rock.

The boat which the writer steered happened to be the last which
approached the rock at this tide; and, in standing up in the stern,
while at some distance, to see how the leading boat entered the
creek, he was astonished to observe something in the form of a
human figure, in a reclining posture, upon one of the ledges of the
rock.  He immediately steered the boat through a narrow entrance to
the eastern harbour, with a thousand unpleasant sensations in his
mind.  He thought a vessel or boat must have been wrecked upon the
rock during the night; and it seemed probable that the rock might
be strewed with dead bodies, a spectacle which could not fail to
deter the artificers from returning so freely to their work.  In
the midst of these reveries the boat took the ground at an improper
landing-place; but, without waiting to push her off, he leapt upon
the rock, and making his way hastily to the spot which had
privately given him alarm, he had the satisfaction to ascertain
that he had only been deceived by the peculiar situation and aspect
of the smith's anvil and block, which very completely represented
the appearance of a lifeless body upon the rock.  The writer
carefully suppressed his feelings, the simple mention of which
might have had a bad effect upon the artificers, and his haste
passed for an anxiety to examine the apparatus of the smith's
forge, left in an unfinished state at evening tide.

In the course of this morning's work two or three apparently
distant peals of thunder were heard, and the atmosphere suddenly
became thick and foggy.  But as the Smeaton, our present tender,
was moored at no great distance from the rock, the crew on board
continued blowing with a horn, and occasionally fired a musket, so
that the boats got to the ship without difficulty.

[Thursday, 20th Aug.]

The wind this morning inclined from the north-east, and the sky had
a heavy and cloudy appearance, but the sea was smooth, though there
was an undulating motion on, the surface, which indicated easterly
winds, and occasioned a slight surf upon the rock.  But the boats
found no difficulty in landing at the western creek at half-past
seven, and, after a good tide's work, left it again about a quarter
from eleven.  In the evening the artificers landed at half-past
seven, and continued till half-past eight, having completed the
fixing of the smith's forge, his vice, and a wooden board or bench,
which were also batted to a ledge of the rock, to the great joy of
all, under a salute of three hearty cheers.  From an oversight on
the part of the smith, who had neglected to bring his tinder-box
and matches from the vessel, the work was prevented from being
continued for at least an hour longer.

The smith's shop was, of course, in OPEN SPACE:  the large bellows
were carried to and from the rock every tide, for the serviceable
condition of which, together with the tinder-box, fuel, and embers
of the former fire, the smith was held responsible.  Those who have
been placed in situations to feel the inconveniency and want of
this useful artisan, will be able to appreciate his value in a case
like the present.  It often happened, to our annoyance and
disappointment, in the early state of the work, when the smith was
in the middle of a FAVOURITE HEAT in making some useful article, or
in sharpening the tools, after the flood-tide had obliged the
pickmen to strike work, a sea would come rolling over the rocks,
dash out the fire, and endanger his indispensable implement, the
bellows.  If the sea was smooth, while the smith often stood at
work knee-deep in water, the tide rose by imperceptible degrees,
first cooling the exterior of the fireplace, or hearth, and then
quietly blackening and extinguishing the fire from below.  The
writer has frequently been amused at the perplexing anxiety of the
blacksmith when coaxing his fire and endeavouring to avert the
effects of the rising tide.

[Friday, 21st Aug.]

Everything connected with the forge being now completed, the
artificers found no want of sharp tools, and the work went forward
with great alacrity and spirit.  It was also alleged that the rock
had a more habitable appearance from the volumes of smoke which
ascended from the smith's shop and the busy noise of his anvil, the
operations of the masons, the movements of the boats, and shipping
at a distance--all contributed to give life and activity to the
scene.  This noise and traffic had, however, the effect of almost
completely banishing the herd of seals which had hitherto
frequented the rock as a resting-place during the period of low
water.  The rock seemed to be peculiarly adapted to their habits,
for, excepting two or three days at neap-tides, a part of it always
dries at low water--at least, during the summer season--and as
there was good fishing-ground in the neighbourhood, without a human
being to disturb or molest them, it had become a very favourite
residence of these amphibious animals, the writer having
occasionally counted from fifty to sixty playing about the rock at
a time.  But when they came to be disturbed every tide, and their
seclusion was broken in upon by the kindling of great fires,
together with the beating of hammers and picks during low water,
after hovering about for a time, they changed their place, and
seldom more than one or two were to be seen about the rock upon the
more detached outlayers which dry partially, whence they seemed to
look with that sort of curiosity which is observable in these
animals when following a boat.

[Saturday, 22nd Aug.]

Hitherto the artificers had remained on board the Smeaton, which
was made fast to one of the mooring buoys at a distance only of
about a quarter of a mile from the rock, and, of course, a very
great conveniency to the work.  Being so near, the seamen could
never be mistaken as to the progress of the tide, or state of the
sea upon the rock, nor could the boats be much at a loss to pull on
board of the vessel during fog, or even in very rough weather; as
she could be cast loose from her moorings at pleasure, and brought
to the lee side of the rock.  But the Smeaton being only about
forty register tons, her accommodations were extremely limited.  It
may, therefore, be easily imagined that an addition of twenty-four
persons to her own crew must have rendered the situation of those
on board rather uncomfortable.  The only place for the men's
hammocks on board being in the hold, they were unavoidably much
crowded:  and if the weather had required the hatches to be
fastened down, so great a number of men could not possibly have
been accommodated.  To add to this evil, the co-boose or cooking-
place being upon deck, it would not have been possible to have
cooked for so large a company in the event of bad weather.

The stock of water was now getting short, and some necessaries
being also wanted for the floating light, the Smeaton was
despatched for Arbroath; and the writer, with the artificers at the
same time shifted their quarters from her to the floating light.

Although the rock barely made its appearance at this period of the
tides till eight o'clock, yet, having now a full mile to row from
the floating light to the rock, instead of about a quarter of a
mile from the moorings of the Smeaton, it was necessary to be
earlier astir, and to form different arrangements; breakfast was
accordingly served up at seven o'clock this morning.  From the
excessive motion of the floating light, the writer had looked
forward rather with anxiety to the removal of the workmen to this
ship.  Some among them, who had been congratulating themselves upon
having become sea-hardy while on board the Smeaton, had a complete
relapse upon returning to the floating light.  This was the case
with the writer.  From the spacious and convenient berthage of the
floating light, the exchange to the artificers was, in this
respect, much for the better.  The boats were also commodious,
measuring sixteen feet in length on the keel, so that, in fine
weather, their complement of sitters was sixteen persons for each,
with which, however, they were rather crowded, but she could not
stow two boats of larger dimensions.  When there was what is called
a breeze of wind, and a swell in the sea, the proper number for
each boat could not, with propriety, be rated at more than twelve
persons.

When the tide-bell rung the boats were hoisted out, and two active
seamen were employed to keep them from receiving damage alongside.
The floating light being very buoyant, was so quick in her motions
that when those who were about to step from her gunwale into a
boat, placed themselves upon a cleat or step on the ship's side,
with the man or rail ropes in their hands, they had often to wait
for some time till a favourable opportunity occurred for stepping
into the boat.  While in this situation, with the vessel rolling
from side to side, watching the proper time for letting go the man-
ropes, it required the greatest dexterity and presence of mind to
leap into the boats.  One who was rather awkward would often wait a
considerable period in this position:  at one time his side of the
ship would be so depressed that he would touch the boat to which he
belonged, while the next sea would elevate him so much that he
would see his comrades in the boat on the opposite side of the
ship, his friends in the one boat calling to him to 'Jump,' while
those in the boat on the other side, as he came again and again
into their view, would jocosely say, 'Are you there yet?  You seem
to enjoy a swing.'  In this situation it was common to see a person
upon each side of the ship for a length of time, waiting to quit
his hold.