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By Root 764 0

and all his descendants. He wrote a piece for the Scotsman in June 1860 announcing ‘a Review of the Conduct and Writings of Messrs Robert, Alan, David and Thomas Stevenson, as engineers to the Scottish Lighthouse Board, in reference to their Ignorance of the proper optical arrangements for Lighthouses and Distinguishing Lights – their perversion of Scientific History – their interested and obstinate opposition to the substitution of Lenses for hammered Reflectors – and their calumnies against the inventors of the Dioptric System of Lights, now in universal use, introduced into Great Britain by the persevering labours of Sir David Brewster and into France by the celebrated philosopher MA Fresnel.’ The audience for this dispute had clearly grown exhausted some time ago. The Scotsman itself warned ‘against any third party attempting to act as judge or umpire between the combatants’, and a letter to Brewster from M. Biot of the French Academy of Science announced peremptorily that ‘he conceived the wrongs Sir D Brewster complained of to be purely imaginary, and concluded that by saying that at their time of life such retrospective polemics should be avoided.’

The whole dispute had achieved almost nothing except proof of Brewster’s temper and Robert’s over-cautious habits. Perhaps some of the public humiliations, and much of the parliamentary wranglings, could have been avoided if Robert had been keener to adopt new technology; perhaps there was a speck of truth in Brewster’s allegation that the Commissioners’ chief engineer was granted too much power. But the core of the argument – that Brewster, not Fresnel, should be credited with the invention of lighthouse lenses and that the Commissioners and Robert had acted criminally in failing to adopt them – had been proved false. The only useful consequence of the saga was to demonstrate beyond doubt that Robert’s successors were more than worthy of their name and position. Robert’s dithering over the adoption of lenses and his habit of retreating into bluster and pomp when threatened seemed at odds with Alan’s intelligent analysis of the new methods. It had been Alan who had understood the science of lenses, Alan who had adapted them for Scottish purposes, and Alan who had done most to ensure their success. Robert might have made more noise, but Alan, it seemed, was going to be more than a match for his father.

SIX

Skerryvore

The helicopter skims low over Mull, dipping past swatches of forestry and fox-red moorland. Out beyond, past Staffa and Fingal’s Cave, lies the Atlantic, placid today but easily roused. Away to the left juts the remnant edges of the Scottish mainland; up on the right, Tiree and Coll appear flattened against the horizon. The helicopter flies on, low over the water, past ladders of sunlight and clusters of rock.

Finally, just when the passengers can see nothing but the width of the ocean and the size of the sky, there is a flash of whiteness up ahead. At first it’s only a disturbance in the water, then a small blackened stub appears, rising up out of a ruff of surf. A little closer, and the passengers can see a tangle of black rocks stretching away to the left with the sea beating itself repeatedly against their sides. Rising up from the centre of the reef, like the spire of some subterranean cathedral, is a dark tower. On its crown is a diamond-paned lantern, a weather vane and a balcony rail; down the sides are tiny slitted windows like a row of buttons. To one side is a rudimentary pier, and on the right a concrete pad marked with an ‘H’. A few whiskery seals watch the helicopter’s approach, then flump off the rocks into the water to join the sea birds. The helicopter lands and the passengers scurry away to crouch under the lee of the tower.

Up at the top of a precipitous iron ladder and through the nine-foot thickness of granite, there is a metal door, barred and padlocked. Inside, there are more ladders, a confusion of machinery and a strong smell of neglect. The rooms of the tower reach up and up, through an endless succession of batteries, generators