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By Root 672 0

it was in working it; one high wave or an approaching tide would fill it as fast as it was emptied. Twenty men would be set to pumping out the water while the remaining workers picked through the murk. With its miniature mountains and dips, the reef made digging difficult; it was hard to get a purchase on the rock and required hours of patience to make even the smallest indentation. As with the stones, Robert decreed that the pit should be shaped as accurately as possible to the eventual curves of the tower itself; one chip out of place, and the work was disrupted for days. He had reluctantly abandoned the possibility of blasting the foundations; dynamite was still too unreliable and could easily fracture the rock beyond repair.

Thus every chip and fragment had to be hammered by hand, taking days of work and skill. The masons also discovered that the deeper they dug, the harder and less workable the reef became. Robert, as usual, took precautions, and had a smith and forge already assembled at the rock so picks and boring-irons could be sharpened as hastily as possible. Conditions were easier while the weather was good, but in rain or strong wind, the workmen could only make progress at a snail’s pace. Robert found himself striking an uncomfortable balance between speed and rigour; the day’s work had to be done as quickly as possible before the next tide rose and covered the rock, but at the same time he could not risk the possibility of shoddy workmanship. However, by early July, the pit was considered ready enough to allow Robert to escort the foundation stone from Arbroath.

Much of the work revealed Robert’s affection for ceremony. Everything, from the start of digging to the end of the highest tides, was accompanied by some form of fanfare. In part, it was his method of rewarding the men for their work. More than that, it showed his own militaristic leanings. Robert had a fetish for organisation; he liked his emotions well-disciplined and his joy neatly timetabled. Military discipline – brasswork, uniform, duty, honour – was also the most efficient method of ensuring a loyal and obedient workforce. Since the lighthouse service was still young, Robert could have tried almost any method of managing his employees; as it was, he chose the method which seemed most easily comprehensible to the men and which most suited him.

The naval flavour which he gave the service remained long after he was gone. He commissioned a special prayer ‘for the use of those employed at the erection of the Bell Rock Light House’, petitioning God to ‘prosper, we beseech thee, the work itself in which we are engaged. May it remain long after our eyes have ceased to behold it.’ Hoisting flags, chanting blessings and nipping away at ceremonial drams were Robert’s methods of expressing happiness he would not have stopped to analyse. In later years he regarded his time at the Bell Rock not just with pride but with nostalgia. In hindsight it became the point in his life when he had been most completely fulfilled. As with the arduous inspection voyages, the risks were part of the pleasure. He kept the respect of his men as much through his own involvement in their work as he did through good management and consideration.

Nor was he indifferent to the peculiarities of his work. Even to Robert’s prosaic gaze, the project often presented a strange, almost supernatural appearance. When the digging was at its height, the reef reverberated with the clamour of metal, fire and stone, casting out its elemental image over the seas. He noted on one particularly productive June day that

The surface of the rock was crowded with men, the two forges flaming, the one above the other, upon the beacon, while the anvils thundered with the rebounding noise of their wooden supports, and formed a curious contrast with the occasional clamour of the surges…In the course of the forenoon, the beacon exhibited a still more extraordinary appearance than the rock had done in the morning. The sea being smooth, it seemed to be afloat upon the water, with a number of men supporting