The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [49]
Robert seethed for ten days, and then tried another tactic. As he pointed out, the men needed provisions; surely a boat bringing food and tools would be permitted just a few stones? The Customs Officer considered and relented, Robert was allowed his few stones, and building work went on, albeit surreptitiously. Until the embargo was lifted, however, Robert was forced to rely on a much diminished workforce and the goodwill of the Port Officer, who, Robert noted slyly, helped ‘mainly through the…liberal interpretation of his orders’. By the end of August when work stopped for the year, the solid foundations had been finished, the embargo lifted, and Robert was pleased. In one season, the light had taken 1,300 tons of granite and risen over thirty feet from the ground. That year, Rennie made no visit and did not submit his customary report to the Commissioners.
When Robert and the workmen returned to Arbroath, with the usual three-gun salute and hoisting of flags, he was clearly beginning to feel that the Bell Rock represented a way of life for everyone involved. He wrote delightedly that
Nothing can equal the happy manner in which these excellent workmen spent their time. While at the rock, between the tides, they amused themselves in reading, fishing, music, playing cards, draughts, etc, or in sporting with one another. In the work-yard at Arbroath the young men were, almost without exception, employed in the evening at school, in writing and arithmetic, and not a few were learning architectural drawing, for which they had every convenience and facility…It therefore affords the most pleasing reflections to look back upon the pursuits of about sixty individuals who for years conducted themselves, on all occasions, in a sober and rational manner.
His own conduct had long ago earned the trust of the men. Robert rooted himself as deeply in the work as his staff, and for all the stiffness of his standards, they felt him to be an approachable character. When men were injured, he organised treatment, when invalided, he settled pensions, and when exhausted, he rewarded them with nips of whisky and offhand compliments. Their pay was still paltry – only 20 shillings a week, whatever the conditions – but they were reasonably content. These, after all, were skilled and able men, who understood the value of work well done as instinctively as Robert did. During the evenings, they sat in cramped intimacy up in the beacon, the beds laid five-deep up the walls, playing cards, writing letters and chatting. In fine weather, some would fish for the small fry surrounding the reef, and in bad, there would be fiddle music and singing. Robert had a small cabin to himself, little more than four feet broad, in which he kept a cot-bed, a folding table, a few books, a barometer and two small stools. Occasionally he received visitors there, but most of the time he was writing letters, keeping up his journal or ‘making practical experiments of the fewness of the positive wants of men.’ The Bible, he declared, was his only truly essential item.
Yet 1810 was to be the most demanding year so far. Work started in mid-April, with Robert determined to hasten matters on as swiftly as possible. The men found the beacon intact, but a little damaged