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most urgent sites, and between 1812 and 1833 was responsible for eighteen new lights all around the coast, including Cape Wrath, the Mull of Galloway and Dunnet Head. All of them were island or mainland lights, built to a well-established template and considered relatively straightforward compared to the Bell Rock. With most of them, Robert could delegate much of the practical building work to his assistants and rarely needed to stay on site. He was also now responsible for lighting the Isle of Man, since Parliament had chosen to place the island under NLB supervision. The routine of Robert’s life grew increasingly crowded. In addition to the annual inspection tours, he made one or two extra visits every year around the coast, instructing builders and fussing over the keepers. In Edinburgh, he spent his time soliciting for business, involved in existing projects and in staying up to date with the regular bureaucracy of the Commissioners.

While Robert was hopping around the coast spreading instruction and light, the state of the sea was also changing. In 1815, the press gang was finally abolished. With the end of the Napoleonic wars and the Treaty of Vienna, naval manpower slumped from 145,000 souls to around 19,000; those who remained in the navy now did so voluntarily. With the reduction in numbers, payment of wages improved and there was no longer the same enthusiastic reliance on rum, sodomy and the lash. With the absence of war came other changes. Steam began slowly to replace sail. Some form of training was introduced for seamen and the slave trade was finally halted. In 1822, the same year George IV arrived to inspect his northern kingdom, the last pirate in Scotland was hanged in Leith. In England, piracy hobbled on for a few more years, though it was not until 1840 that the last pirate was staked to the ground at Wapping’s Execution Dock to wait for the rising tide.

The first stirrings of concern for mariners’ conditions also began to produce effects. In 1836, a parliamentary select committee was established to ‘inquire into the cause of the increased number of shipwrecks with a view to ascertaining whether such improvements might not be made in the construction, equipment and navigation of merchant vessels as would greatly diminish the annual loss of life at sea’. At the time, the mortality rate from shipwreck was running at around 1,000 deaths a year. As the Committee discovered, most of those deaths were preventable. Poor construction and design, inadequate equipment, overloading, masters’ incompetence, lack of harbours, inaccurate charts and drunkenness were all rife within merchant shipping at the time. In the next few years, campaigning by Samuel Plimsoll forced the introduction of compulsory load lines (marking the level to which a ship could safely be weighted), merchant masters and mates were compelled to carry certification and the first attempt to lay down ‘rules of the road’ had been made. On their own, none of the changes made much of an impact on the figures, but cumulatively they marked the beginnings of a practical response to the mistakes of the past.

Robert took a keen interest in the changes in legislation and safety. He was years ahead of his time in recommending that ships should be properly lit, with a lamp on both port and starboard sides to indicate the width and proximity of ships travelling at night. He also kept a weather eye out for developments in England and abroad. In amongst one of his scrapbooks was a Times notice of September 1805 advertising A Curious Aquatic Exhibition: Daniel’s Life Preserver. The life preserver was a forerunner of the cork life jacket, a waterproofed leather vest inflated by blowing into a silver tube. The notice announced that

Several persons, thus equipped, jumped into the Thames from Mr D’s boat…and floated through the centre arch of London Bridge, with perfect ease and safety; some were observed to be smoaking their pipes, others playing the flute and french horn, and which they seem’d to perform with as much indifference as on dry land…The advantages