The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [106]
Little more than a week later, another force-12 gale hit the rock. This time, reported Principal Keeper Marchbank, by now almost incoherent with weariness and fright, ‘such was the violence of the Wind and Spray that it carried up Earth and Stones with such Violence against the Lantern of the Tower that it broke one of the panes of Glass in the Lantern we immediately got in the Storm pane and it broke one of the panes of it and at the same time it Broke Two of our Lamp Glasses and nearly extinguished our Light such was the Violence of the Wind and spray that we all thought they would carry everything before them…it was 4 O’Clock in the morning before any of us got to bed Mr Charles Barclay and his Workmen say they never heard any thing like it in their time it was blowing so strong and the Spray so heavy.’ This time, the coal house was blown down, the dyke breached in several places, and the water had come unbroken through the dwelling house. During the lulls, Barclay and the men had worked frantically to repair the damage and strengthen the tower. It made little difference. On 31 December, another storm stole forty feet of the dyke, six of the water casks and a chunk of the ladder. The barracks was now so thoroughly soaked that all the bedding and supplies had to be destroyed. ‘We had not a dry part about all the premises,’ wrote Marchbank unhappily. ‘We have been very uncomfortable for the last Month both in the Lightroom and Dwelling house when we had not a dry part to sit down in nor even a dry Bed to rest upon at night.’ For the seas to rise unbroken over a 200-foot rock presented difficulties that no one, not even the Stevensons, could have planned for.
David was so concerned for the keepers’ safety that he felt bound to report to the Board of Trade that ‘life is in jeopardy’. If the Commissioners had their way, he noted pointedly, everyone would have been removed from the rock and the light discontinued for the winter. For once, Trinity House backed him up, remarking that those who lived on the rocks were the best judges of conditions, and conceding the ‘serious danger to which the lives of the Light Keepers would be exposed by a continued residence on the rock’. They did, nevertheless, feel that Muckle Flugga was still the ‘most proper site’ on which to have a lighthouse, whether temporary or permanent. The Board of Trade and the Admiralty also agreed that, despite the hazards to human life, the risks would be far greater if the light was removed. In the face of implacable opposition to the withdrawal of Muckle Flugga, David’s solution was to suggest strengthening the light, making it permanent instead of temporary. If the men could not be brought off, at least they could be made safer than at present.
Establishing the permanent light meant a reversion to more traditional methods. Workmen’s cottages had to be built near the site, one of the lighthouse ships taken out of service at Leith and stationed permanently on Shetland, and staff, from storekeepers to boat crew, appointed. As David noted glumly in his report on the new works, ‘The place is wholly without local resources and every thing even to a ropes end must be conveyed to the Spot no assistance is to be derived from the natives excepting in boating and all masons, quarriers &c must be taken from this [the allocated funds] and high Wages paid to induce them to go.’ This time, David had decided to use brick instead of the customary granite to build the light, since brick was less troublesome to transport, easier to haul up the rock, and dispensed with the need for awkward quarrying. The rock itself was so flawed that it splintered into fragments during extraction, and without a deep cladding of plasterwork would have let water come pouring into the tower. ‘The whole of the