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By Root 689 0

’ grazing rights, suddenly filled with the chatter of experiments, addresses and arguments over the Bell Rock project. With his customary mixture of bluntness and guile, Robert appealed to anything and everything that he felt might possibly strike a chord with the Commissioners; public duty, maritime prosperity, benevolent humanity, compassion or guilt. In a lengthy address presented to the Commissioners in 1800, Robert deployed all his political skills towards his cause. A good dose of melodrama, which he usually avoided, also helped. Mariners, he announced, often avoided the terrors of the Firth of Forth ‘on account of the Bell Rock, which, like another Cerberus, guards its entrance’. ‘I will venture to say,’ he continued, ‘that there is not a more dangerous situation upon the whole coasts of the Kingdom, or one that calls more loudly for something to be done, than the Cape or Bell Rock.’

Fine words were only half the battle. As he pointed out in the report, he had also studied the rock carefully in his own time, and had concluded that a lighthouse could be constructed on at least one part of the reef. In 1794, he had tried to reach it, but, to his embarrassment, had been unable to land because of the filthy seas. Even from a distance, however, Robert had concluded that it would be possible to use the reef’s own geography to his advantage. His first idea was for a lighthouse on pillars, similar to the model of the Smalls light in England. Six pillars of cast iron would be sunk into the sandstone, supporting a small, rocket-shaped cabin with a light-room on top and four small apartments for the keepers. The advantage to a pillared light, Robert considered, was that it would provide least resistance to the impact of the sea; waves would rush through the pillars, instead of banging heavily against a solid structure. The flaws to this scheme, as he acknowledged, were that ships might become entangled within the pillars and that the cast-iron foundation would rust, needing frequent maintenance. The Commissioners, considering the plan both too flimsy and too expensive, rejected it.

Robert’s second trip to the reef in 1800 was more successful. He was escorted by local fishermen, who managed to land him on the rock and then disappeared to hunt for wreck while Robert made his investigations. By the time Robert had concluded his survey, he noted, the fishermen had gathered ‘two cwt of old metal, consisting of such things as are used on shipboard,’ including, ‘a ship’s marking iron, a piece of a ship’s caboose, a soldiers bayonet, a cannon ball, several pieces of money, a shoe buckle…a kedge anchor, cabin-stove crowbars &c.’ If nothing else, their findings impressed on him the rock’s ability to destroy even the sturdiest of ships. Robert’s findings were equally fruitful. He had surveyed the rock as fully as possible, noting at least one site on which a building could stand. He also realised that the durability of the sandstone made a perfect base for the light. Back at home in Baxter’s Place, he abandoned his plans for a pillared light and turned instead to the idea of a stone tower. It would be built in much the same way as Smeaton’s Eddystone light, using dovetailed granite and tapering gently upwards towards the lantern. It was, he conceded, to be ‘a work which cannot be reduced to the common maxims of the arts and which in some measure stands unconnected to any other branch of business’. The plan he presented to the Commissioners in his report differed from Smeaton only in details. He would diminish the width of the walls gradually, instead of following the Eddystone’s pattern of a solid stone base with the apartments perched on top. A stone tower, he concluded, was better able to resist the pressures of the Bell Rock, and would last longer than any structure of metal. ‘The more I see of this Rock,’ he confided privately to John Gray, clerk at the NLB, ‘the less I think of the difficulty I at first conceived of erecting a building of stone upon it.’

His report to the Commissioners conceded that the costs would indeed be high