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By Root 755 0

just mourn its consequences. And, inevitably, they see the flaws in a system dependent on technology. As another keeper noted dourly, ‘Computers don’t get drunk, don’t go insane, don’t fall asleep. They just break down sometimes.’ But, as Captain James Taylor, currently the NLB’s Chief Executive, points out, the Stevensons would have approved of automation. If Robert could have built the lights to run automatically, he probably would have done so, considering his pride in machinery and his exasperation with the keepers. Given the debate over the loss of the keepers and the need for lights, it comes as a surprise to discover that the NLB does still build lights. The most recent examples, all built to guide the oil tankers sailing up the Minch on their way to the Sullom Voe terminal, are made of aluminium and just as sturdy as the first lights 210 years ago. None, needless to say, have ever been manned.

Two hundred years of professional history certainly made the keepers a singular breed of men. The necessary qualities for keeping were not the sort easily itemised on a job description. A love of details, an affection for the endless repetition of small tasks, a long-learned understanding of water, wind and tide, a habit of mind able to cope with dull days and ferocious nights. Bruce Brown, the last keeper at Duncansby Head, regarded patience as a prerequisite. ‘There must be something in you. It’s got to be there. Your outlook on life, it’s all got to be thought about. Nothing bothers you; you just get that used to it that you just let it go, let it flow along. There’s the rough, the smooth, the bad, the awful and the worst, and you just take it all.’ Angus Hutchison, the man with the dubious honour of being The Last Keeper in Scotland (as principal at Fair Isle South), believes that good humour, equanimity, and a thorough understanding of human fallibility were the most important qualities. ‘You need patience, a ready recognition of your own faults as well of those in the people around you, you need to make allowances. Most of us became very good at reading people’s shortcomings and strengths.’

Many of the Scottish keepers had one particular quality in common, a vast and endearing capacity for understatement. Two-hundred-foot waves and winds strong enough to uproot fully grown trees were regarded as ‘a bit rough out there tonight’, a swaying tower light as ‘an interesting experience’, and a force-11 gale as ‘a bit of a breeze’. Not everyone would relish a posting to the Flannan Isles, or consider themselves fortunate to watch 100-mph storm-force winds. Donald Michael, the last keeper at the Butt of Lewis, climbed to the top of the tower with his wife during the final gale of his tenure, just to watch. They couldn’t hear themselves speak, so they just stood listening to the wind. ‘It was an experience,’ he says lightly. ‘It was definitely something, watching that sea.’ Most lights were fitted with railings around the cottages to prevent the keepers being hurled off the cliff edges by the wind. The men themselves deflect strangers’ astonishment with a modest smile and a self-deprecating aside. The fables are left to spectators and trippers. Keepers do not feel the need for tall tales.

If you take the road north, go to the outermost point till the land stops and there is nothing but the broad dark horizon. Then go a little further. It doesn’t particularly matter which road or which corner of Scotland you choose. Sule Skerry, Esha Ness, Ushenish, Skurdy Ness, Hyskeir, Auskerry, Ornsay, Muckle Flugga, Ruvaal, Skerryvore. Somewhere out there past the back of beyond will be a neat white wall, a few wind-scoured cottages and a tower. Seen from above, they look like punctuation marks between land and sea; a ragged grammar of full stops marking the end of Britain. Or, if you remember that these light squares are now abandoned, perhaps they seem more like graveyards. All that stone and history and effort, you think, just for a lightbulb.

TEN

Epilogue

To those who use and need the sea today, the argument over the lighthouses