The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [105]
One glance at a map of Scotland reveals how much David’s reservations were justified. The Admiralty were demanding a light on the last piece of land between Shetland and the Arctic Circle. Unst is closer to the Faroe Islands than it is to Edinburgh. By the lines of latitude, it is farther north than St Petersburg or Greenland’s southern cape. The Admiralty wanted a lighthouse built on a rock just off the northernmost tip of the island, a place known with quaint charm as Muckle Flugga. The rock itself, the ‘Great Precipice’ is less charming. It forms part of a large reef protruding vertically out of the sea like a range of miniature Alps. The main rock is not a flat shelf as the Bell Rock and Skerryvore had been, but a steep triangle rising sheer from the water. The seas in the area were so atrocious that it was commonplace during winter for unbroken waves to sweep right over the 200-foot summit of the rock, a height 50 feet above the top of Nelson’s Column. While David was conducting his initial survey he made note of a six-ton block of stone which had been torn from its moorings eighty feet above sea level and hurled into the sea below. This, he reported drily, ‘clearly proves that on these coasts we have elements to encounter of no ordinary nature.’ In addition to the monstrous seas, there were also the attendant threats of newly revitalised press gangs patrolling the area, the difficulties for the lighthouse ship in bringing supplies for a light, and the problems with staffing it when built. Matters were not helped by the Shetlanders’ suspicion of the Edinburgh men. Once informed that war with Russia had broken out, the locals refused to help with the light, and appeared to believe that David and his assistants were Russian themselves.
The Commissioners reluctantly decided that a temporary light was to be built on the summit of the Flugga and provided with separate accommodation for the keepers. The stone for the light was to be quarried from the rock itself, and the rest of the materials shipped from Edinburgh. On 31 July, the lighthouse ship sailed from Leith with a cargo of men and a hundred tons of materials. The job of resident engineer for the works had been delegated to Robert’s old assistant Alan Brebner, who was to be relieved in winter by Charles Barclay, with David as overall supervisor. Work progressed quickly, though David was keen to point out the difficulties involved. ‘When it is considered that the whole of the materials and stores consisting of Water, Cement, Lime, Coal, Iron Work, Glass, Provisions &c, and weighing upwards of 100 tons had to be landed at an exposed rock, and carried up to the top on the backs of labourers, it will be seen that the exertions of Mr Brebner who conducted the Works…[have] been in the highest degree praiseworthy.’ Even in relatively mild weather, the ship could not moor too close to the rock, so (as at Skerryvore) everything to be landed had to be strung together with rope, swung overboard and hauled up the temporary wooden ladders to the summit. In all, 120 tons of materials were dragged bodily up the rock by the workmen and fitted into place. By 11 October, three months from the start of works, the temporary light was ready.
David’s misgivings remained. On 2 December, a violent storm began brewing. Within two hours it reached hurricane force. The supervisor on the rock, Charles Barclay, reported to the Commissioners that ‘the sea was all like smoke as far as we could see and the noise which the wind made on the roof of our House and on the tower was like thunder…the water came pouring in upon us, so that we had to drive it out (as much