CHAPTER FIVE.
THE BELL ROCK INVADED.
A year passed away. Nothing more was heard of Ruby Brand, and theburglary was believed to be one of those mysteries which are destinednever to be solved.
About this time great attention was being given by Government to thesubject of lighthouses. The terrible number of wrecks that had takenplace had made a deep impression on the public mind. The position anddangerous character of the Bell Rock, in particular, had been for a longtime the subject of much discussion, and various unsuccessful attemptshad been made to erect a beacon of some sort thereon.
There is a legend that in days of old one of the abbots of theneighbouring monastery of Aberbrothoc erected a bell on the InchcapeRock, which was tolled in rough weather by the action of the waves on afloat attached to the tongue, and thus mariners were warned at night andin foggy weather of their approach to the rock, the great danger ofwhich consists in its being a sunken reef, lying twelve miles from thenearest land, and exactly in the course of vessels making for the firthsof Forth and Tay. The legend further tells how that a Danish pirate,named Ralph the Rover, in a mischievous mood, cut the bell away, andthat, years afterwards, he obtained his appropriate reward by beingwrecked on the Bell Rock, when returning from a long cruise laden withbooty.
Whether this be true or not is an open question, but certain it is thatno beacon of any kind was erected on this rock until the beginning ofthe nineteenth century, after a great storm in 1799 had stirred thepublic mind, and set springs in motion, which from that time forwardhave never ceased to operate.
Many and disastrous were the shipwrecks that occurred during the stormreferred to, which continued, with little intermission, for three days.Great numbers of ships were driven from their moorings in the Downs andYarmouth Roads; and these, together with all vessels navigating theGerman Ocean at that time, were drifted upon the east coast of Scotland.
It may not, perhaps, be generally known that there are only three greatinlets or estuaries to which the mariner steers when overtaken byeasterly storms in the North Sea--namely, the Humber, and the firths ofForth and Moray. The mouth of the Thames is too much encumbered bysand-banks to be approached at night or during bad weather. The Humberis also considerably obstructed in this way, so that the Roads of Leith,in the Firth of Forth, and those of Cromarty, in the Moray Firth, arethe chief places of resort in easterly gales. But both of these hadtheir special risks.
On the one hand, there was the danger of mistaking the Dornoch Firth forthe Moray, as it lies only a short way to the north of the latter; and,in the case of the Firth of Forth, there was the terrible Bell Rock.
Now, during the storm of which we write, the fear of those two dangerswas so strong upon seamen that many vessels were lost in trying to avoidthem, and much hardship was sustained by mariners who preferred to seekshelter in higher latitudes. It was estimated that no fewer thanseventy vessels were either stranded or lost during that single gale,and many of the crews perished.
At one wild part of the coast, near Peterhead, called the Bullers ofBuchan, after the first night of the storm, the wrecks of seven vesselswere found in one cove, without a single survivor of the crews to givean account of the disaster.
The "dangers of the deep" are nothing compared with the _dangers of theshore_. If the hard rocks of our island could tell the tale of theirexperience, and if we landsmen could properly appreciate it, we shouldunderstand more clearly why it is that sailors love blue (in otherwords, deep) water during stormy weather.
In order to render the Forth more accessible by removing the danger ofthe Bell Rock, it was resolved by the Commissioners of Northern Lightsto build a lighthouse upon it. This resolve was a much bolder one thanmost people suppose, for the rock on which the lighthouse was to beerected was a sunken reef, visible only at low tide during two or threehours, and quite inaccessible in bad weather. It was the nearestapproach to building a house _in_ the sea that had yet been attempted!The famous Eddystone stands on a rock which is _never quite_ underwater, although nearly so, for its crest rises a very little above thehighest tides, while the Bell Rock is eight or ten feet under water athigh tides.
It must be clear, therefore, to everyone, that difficulties, unusual inmagnitude and peculiar in kind, must have stood in the way of the daringengineer who should undertake the erection of a tower on a rock twelvemiles out on the stormy sea, and the foundation of which was coveredwith ten or twelve feet of water every tide; a tower which would have tobe built _perfectly_, yet _hastily_; a tower which should form acomfortable home, fit for human beings to dwell in, and yet strongenough to withstand the utmost fury of the waves, not merely whirlinground it, as might be the case on some exposed promontory, but rushingat it, straight and fierce from the wild ocean, in great blue solidbillows that should burst in thunder on its sides, and rush up inscarcely less solid spray to its lantern, a hundred feet or more aboveits foundation.
An engineer able and willing to undertake this great work was found inthe person of the late Robert Stevenson of Edinburgh, whose perseveranceand talent shall be commemorated by the grandest and most usefulmonument ever raised by man, as long as the Bell Rock lighthouse shalltower above the sea.
It is not our purpose to go into the details of all that was done in theconstruction of this lighthouse. Our peculiar task shall be to relatethose incidents connected with this work which have relation to theactors in our tale.
We will not, therefore, detain the reader by telling him of all thepreliminary difficulties that were encountered and overcome in this"Robinson Crusoe" sort of work; how that a temporary floating lightship,named the _Pharos_, was prepared and anchored in the vicinity of therock in order to be a sort of depot and rendezvous and guide to thethree smaller vessels employed in the work, as well as a light toshipping generally, and a building-yard was established at Arbroath,where every single stone of the lighthouse was cut and nicely fittedbefore being conveyed to the rock. Neither shall we tell of thedifficulties that arose in the matter of getting blocks of granite largeenough for such masonry, and lime of a nature strong enough to withstandthe action of the salt sea. All this, and a great deal more of a deeplyinteresting nature, must remain untold, and be left entirely to thereader's imagination. [See note 1.]
Suffice it to say that the work was fairly begun in the month of August,1807; that a strong beacon of timber was built, which was so wellconstructed that it stood out all the storms that beat against it duringthe whole time of the building operations; that close to this beacon thepit or foundation of the lighthouse was cut down deep into the solidrock; that the men employed could work only between two and three hoursat a time, and had to pump the water out of this pit each tide beforethey could resume operations; that the work could only be done in thesummer months, and when engaged in it the men dwelt either in the_Pharos_ floating light, or in one of the attending vessels, and werenot allowed to go ashore--that is, to the mainland, about twelve milesdistant; that the work was hard, but so novel and exciting that theartificers at last became quite enamoured of it, and that ere longoperations were going busily forward, and the work was in a prosperousand satisfactory state of advancement.
Things were in this condition at the Bell Rock, when, one fine summerevening, our friend and hero, Ruby Brand, returned, after a longabsence, to his native town.
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Note 1. It may be found, however, in minute detail, in the large andinteresting work entitled _Stevenson's Bell Rock Lighthouse_.