The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS

". . . For the sake
Of these, my kinsmen and my countrymen,
Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled
To plant a star for seamen."

The pirate, Ralph the Rover, so legend tells, while cruising off the coast of Scotland searching for booty or sport, sank the warning bell on one of the great rocks, to plague the good Abbot of Arbroath who had put it there. The following year the Rover returned and perished himself on the same rock.

In the life of one of Scotland's great men, Robert Louis Stevenson, we find proud record of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, having built Bell Rock Lighthouse on this same spot years afterward.

No story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life would be complete that failed to mention the work done for Scotland and the world at large by the two men he held most dear, the engineers, his father and grandfather.

When Robert Stevenson, his grandfather, received his appointment on the Board of Northern Lights the art of lighthouse building in Scotland had just begun. Its bleak, rocky shores were world-famous for their danger, and few mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast "was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of the Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old, an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer. The whole archipelago thus nightly plunged in darkness was shunned by seagoing vessels."

The board at first proposed building four new lights, but afterward built many more, so that to-day Scotland stands foremost among the nations for the number and splendor of her coast lights.

Their construction in those early days meant working against tremendous obstacles and dangers, and the life of the engineer was a hazardous one.

"The seas into which his labors carried him were still scarce charted, the coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the convenience of any road; the isles in which he must sojourn were still partly savage. He must toss much in boats; he must often adventure much on horseback by dubious bridle-track through unfrequented wildernesses; he must sometimes plant his lighthouses in the very camp of wreckers.

"The aid of steam was not yet. At first in random coasting sloop, and afterwards in the cutter belonging to the service, the engineer must ply and run amongst these multiplied dangers and sometimes late into the stormy autumn."

All of which failed to daunt Robert Stevenson who loved action and adventure and the scent of things romantic.

"Not only had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted, the supply of oil must be maintained and the men fed, in the same inaccessible and distant scenes, a whole service with its routine ... had to be called out of nothing; and a new trade (that of light-keeper) to be taught, recruited and organized."

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.

"Work upon the rock in the earliest stages was confined to the calmest days of the summer season, when the tides were lowest, the water smoothest, and the wind in its calmest mood. Under such conditions the men were able to stay on the site for about five hours....

"One distinct drawback was the necessity to establish a depot some distance from the erecting site. Those were the days before steam navigation, and the capricious sailing craft offered the only means of maintaining communication between rock and shore, and for the conveyance of men and materials to and fro....

"A temporary beacon was placed on the reef, while adjacent to the site selected for the tower a smith's forge was made fast, so as to withstand the dragging motion of the waves when the rock was submerged. The men were housed on the Smeaton, which, during the spells of work on the rock, rode at anchor a short distance away in deep water."

Once the engineers were all but lost when the Smeaton slipped her moorings and left them stranded on the rock.

In spite of all the obstacles, the work was completed at the end of two years and the light was shown for the first time February 1, 1811....