The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [48]
Robert was not a man easily moved, but he found the image of man placing his improving mark on nature as satisfying as many of his contemporaries found it satanic.
Once the pit had been levelled, work began on the first few courses of foundations. Each stone had to be jigsawed carefully into place, checked for flaws, and smoothed off. Robert used the minimum of mortar and trenails (the small oak poles joining one course to another), having designed the dovetailed stones so perfectly that no single one could become dislodged without moving the others. Even with the pedantry that this entailed, the work progressed much more quickly after the foundations had been laid; once the first two courses were set, the pit was filled and there was no longer the need for constantly pumping water out. By late September, three full courses had been laid, but the weather was getting so bad that work had to be stopped for the winter. Robert left the rock well satisfied, though he made several excursions during the winter to check that nothing had been broken or dislodged. As before, Rennie made a brief seasick visit to the reef in mid-December and submitted his report to the Commissioners. His role had now been so completely diminished that he could not do much except reiterate what Robert had already told them and insert a few quibbling remarks about the correct form of mortaring.
When work began again in May 1809, Robert concentrated on completing the top floors of the beacon to allow for extra accommodation for some of the workmen. With its six ironbound legs and its sturdy wooden tower, it looked much like a child’s model of a moon-rocket with a small blazing globe of light on its roof. An iron walkway was built as well, connecting it to the foundations of the lighthouse. By early June, everything except the furnishings had been moved into place and eleven men moved gratefully from the cramped Smeaton to the beacon. A few nights later, the weather lurched towards hurricane force. Robert and the remaining workmen stuck on the Smeaton clung to the gunwales and waited for the storm to exhaust itself. Thirty hours later, Robert was able to land on the rock and find out how the stranded men in the beacon had fared. He was alarmed to find that three of the stones from the foundation – each weighing up to a ton – had been lifted from their places and shifted sideways, and that the lowest floor of the beacon had been washed out clean. The men, meanwhile, had clung to the existing stores to prevent them slipping from the windows and wrapped themselves in old sails to keep the water out. James Glen, one of the joiners, had spent the night telling the group about his exploits on a North Sea ship in which he had been reduced to catching and eating the ship’s rats to fend off starvation. The stories had a miraculous effect on the men, who later complained only mildly of their ordeal.
Once building work began again on the tower, it rose quickly from the foundation pit. The first twenty-five courses, Robert had decided, were to provide a solid stub on which the lighthouse and its apartments would sit. That crucial thirty-one feet of solid, dovetailed granite would give the tower both its flexibility and its strength; the sea could claw as much as it liked at the foundations, but would encounter the minimum resistance from the curved stone. As before, the design was Smeaton’s invention brought to Robert’s perfection. By the end of June, they were at work on the ninth courses. Each layer took two days or more to lay and mortar into place, but as the stubby tower tapered upwards from its foundations and the joiners became more practised at their job, work speeded up. And, with the beacon now finished, the workers were able to stay on the rock for most of the day without needing to go back and forth from the Smeaton for food or rest.
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