The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [117]
The works progressed fitfully in Tom’s absence. Gales blew and the weather beat down, and he was forced reluctantly to concede that the working season had to be restricted to just three months in mid-summer. The lantern was eventually fitted and lit in 1872; the whole project had taken a year longer to complete than Skerryvore. It had been an interesting exercise. No matter how practised the Stevensons became in building lights, Dhu Heartach had demonstrated that there would never be a definitive template for all situations. The reef was only a few miles from the great black battlefield of Skerryvore, but the peculiarities of its shape and weather had forced an entirely different working pattern from Alan’s experience. Two years after the completion of the light, a further unexpected hazard appeared. In 1874, the principal keeper wrote to David, informing him that they had been sitting in the lighthouse kitchen when ‘we heard a rumbling noise, followed by a tremendous motion which lasted for about two seconds…a fresh gale from WSW was blowing at the time, but there was no sea striking the rock to cause the concussion; in fact there was less sea than had been for some days previously. When a heavy sea strikes the tower, it has quite a different effect and cannot be mistaken for anything else…I can offer no suggestions as to the cause, unless it proceeded from a slight shock or earthquake; the rumbling noise and tremendous motion indicated such.’ This was not a problem the Stevensons usually encountered, though Scotland does occasionally experience minor tremors. Fortunately, the dovetailed stone construction of all the lights made them more than flexible enough to compensate for small rattlings.
With the completion of Dhu Heartach, Tom turned his attention back to other business. But if he had needed further proof of the waywardness of nature, events at Wick provided it. Harbour works had long provided a staple diet for the Stevenson firm. These were mundane bread-and-butter to them, but essential for the small fishing villages they served. Tom was responsible for the construction of a breakwater at Wick on the instruction of the local Town Council. It was an ordinary commission, executed with the ordinary exactitude of all Stevenson work, and consisted of a long crooked arm of stone and masonry extending out from the harbour into which boats sailed for shelter from the winds. As was now customary with Stevenson projects, it was designed by Tom, but supervised by one of the junior partners in the firm. Tom would appear at intervals during the building work to pick over details and then move on. Louis was also sent there in 1868 as part of his training, and loathed the area with a memorable loathing. ‘Wick itself,’ he later recorded, ‘is one of the meanest of man’s towns, and situate certainly on the baldest of God’s bays.’ He remained indifferent to the harbour, and only showed an interest in proceedings when he was offered a trip down in a diving suit to watch the underwater builders at work. Lowered into floating twilight, surrounded by the immense foundations and the littered stones, Louis found the experience a better lesson in physics than any amount of book-study. He was also enough of his father’s son to derive some pleasure from watching the sea. In a letter to his mother in September 1868, he mentioned standing by the new pierhead, observing the results of a winter gale.
The end of the work displays gaps, cairns of ten ton blocks, stones torn from their places and turned right round. The damage above water is comparatively little: what there may be below, on ne sait pas