The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [73]
The Committee studied everything from the way the separate administrations were managed to the relative benefits of different fuels. The NLB Secretary Charles Cuningham, the Commissioner James Maconochie, Robert and Alan Stevenson were all called before the Members to vouch for the NLB’s works. Between them they answered over 1,200 questions on the Scottish lights. The Committee’s report recommended sweeping changes to both the English and the Scottish services. Trinity House, the Irish lights and the NLB were to be merged and given a base in London; light dues were to be paid to the Treasury who would then parcel out a sum to the centralised administration, and the English lights in private ownership were to be nationalised. In Scotland’s case, the Committee also proposed that all work on the lights should be done by locals, and hinted darkly that they considered the NLB’s chief engineer had altogether too much power.
Uproar ensued. An anonymous letter to the Edinburgh Evening Post, probably written by Captain Wemyss, one of the Commissioners, pounded out its disapproval of both the report and the subsequent bill. ‘The motion,’ said the writer, ‘is nothing more or less than a barefaced, unpatriotic and absurd proposition to place the Lights of Scotland under the Trinity Board in London…Let Scotland take alarm at such bold inroads on her national individuality and let her point the finger of contempt and raise the slogan of shame on her Humes, Murrays, Fergusons and such representatives…In conclusion, I would merely enquire whether that algebraical pated blockhead Hume knows anything at all of the subject whereon he prates so glibly?’ Robert himself ridiculed both the suggestion that he would be able to find well-trained masons in the isolated settlements of the isles and the plan for amalgamating the three administrations. Trinity House, he pointed out, had been criticised in the report for ‘jobbing and plunder’, its lighthouses were a disgrace, and the service was still being run for individual profit, not public benefit. The Scottish lights, by comparison, were prudently managed, successful, and relied almost entirely on close local understanding. Why then should the inefficient English service take over the efficient Scots one? The Irish service made similar objections and the bill was acrimoniously debated in the Commons.
Hume finally backed down a little. The three administrations would be allowed to remain separate, he conceded, but Trinity House was nevertheless to take on an overall supervisory role. All new lighthouse work had to be authorised by them and no new lighthouses could be built until Trinity House allowed it. Separate tolls would be abolished for the Scottish and Irish lights, and there would now be one due paid by all shipping round the British coast. The compromise satisfied no one. Brewster had found no better support for his cause in London than he had in Edinburgh, and as far as the Commissioners were concerned, the Act, even in modified form, interfered with their independence. The whole process had taken months of argument, time that would have been better spent on practicalities. Brewster, never one to accept defeat with good grace, did not diminish his campaign. Indeed, time and parliamentary indifference only seemed to make him angrier.
Though Fresnel’s lenses were gradually accepted and adopted in all the Scottish lights – following a much more thorough enquiry by Alan Stevenson – Brewster still brooded. Almost thirty-five years after the original dispute had begun, Brewster continued hurling broadsides at Robert