The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [19]
Unfortunately, the Scots were no kinder. Compton Mackenzie’s amiable fable of the SS Politician in Whisky Galore was based on a less amiable truth; the Highlanders and Islanders of Scotland were enthusiastic wreckers. Legends and rumours seeded themselves with suspicious frequency; the local minister on the Isle of Sanday was reputed to pray devotedly every Sunday for those in peril on the sea, to ask God politely if he intended to sink any ships soon and, if so, whether He couldn’t organise it so they were wrecked on Sanday. When Robert Stevenson started work on the island in 1806, he noted that wrecks were so frequent in the area that the islanders fenced their fields with ship-timbers instead of stone. Wrecking also produced another curious inequality; rents on the sides of the island that produced most wrecks were higher than on the more hospitable side. Living in a wreck zone had kept the northerners rich, and the southerners poor. Robert was also astonished to discover ‘a park paled round, chiefly with cedar wood and mahogany from the wreck of a Honduras built ship; and in one island, after the wreck of a ship laden with wine, the inhabitants have been known to take claret to their barley meal porridge, instead of their usual beverage.’ Thomas – and Robert in his turn – had a hard task in selling their lights to the islanders before they had even begun to build them.
But for all the predictable and unpredictable human difficulties, Smith’s early efforts with the Scottish lighthouses provided a useful guide for all his professional successors. He was, after all, not a trained engineer in the modern sense, but an imaginative man who did his best with the materials available. The Commissioners had only a vague idea of what the work would entail, and expected Smith to complete most of the supervision on his own and unpaid. For almost ten years, Thomas took no salary at all from the NLB (who were, in any case, broke) and relied entirely on his income from the Edinburgh work. There was some method in his madness.
Thomas worked for the Commissioners because he believed implicitly in the need for guidance at sea, not because he thought it might profit him. He had been reared with a strong notion of public duty, and was quite prepared, despite the lack of money and the spartan conditions, to live up to his promises. Despite the improvised nature of the work, his reports show a good-natured stoicism for the endless hardships he put up with. He noted everything, from the supply of window putty to the problems the keepers had with grazing for their cows. Where routine could be imposed, Thomas tried; he wrote reports, revised instructions, built relationships and imposed discipline. Once it became evident that lighthouse work would demand an ever-increasing amount of time and attention, Thomas resigned himself to regular annual voyages around the coast inspecting existing lights and assessing the necessity for new ones. The voyages were usually hard and often frustrating; Thomas settled into a familiar pattern of remaining storm-stayed in port or being delayed by the unwelcome attention of press gangs.
When back in Edinburgh, Thomas spent much of his time planning improvements to the lights. There were also the demands of Edinburgh society; Thomas, as entrepreneur and public servant, slid happily into the comforts of the New Town bourgeoisie. He trusted implicitly in the Edinburgh virtues of thrift, hard work, humanity and humbug. In middle age, he grew a little stout, but never idle. He worked hard for his business, looked after his family, and took to holding dinner parties. His make-do background had some influence on his later character; once the business was healthy enough, he became the most conservative of men, joined the Edinburgh Spearmen (a volunteer regiment ostensibly called up to fight the revolutionary French but actually dedicated to suppressing domestic riots) and became a captain.