The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [85]
When it did finally begin, the season’s work progressed in lurches and bursts. One day’s good weather would be succeeded by five days’ bad. Alan calculated that between 7 August and 11 September only 165 hours of preparatory work had been completed. The rest of the time was spent storm-stayed in Hynish, sailing from Skerryvore to Tiree or waiting on the rock for stores to arrive. Everything was conducted in an atmosphere of terrible flustered tedium; endless time spent staring at gales interspersed by periods of frantic activity. During fine days, the men worked from 4.00 a.m. with a pause for breakfast at 8.00, then from 8.30 until 2.00 p.m., with another pause for dinner (supplemented by vegetable broth and a little beer), then worked on until 8 or 9.00 p.m., when they would scramble for the boats and the journey home to Hynish. Supper on the boat was rarely eaten with much relish, since the workmen were exhausted and suffered from constant seasickness. The addition of a salted sheep to their provisions did not much encourage their appetites.
Alan sympathised with the men’s complaints, but took consolation from their enthusiasm for argument. ‘The amount of hard labour and long exposure to the sun, which could hardly be reckoned at less than 16 hours a day, prevented much conversation over supper: yet, in many, the love of controversy is so deeply rooted, that I have often, from my small cabin, overheard the political topics of the day, with regard to Church and State, very gravely discussed on deck, over a pipe of tobacco,’ he noted affectionately. When it was necessary to stay overnight on the tender, the men would spend a sleepless night pitching in their bunks before rising at 3.00 a.m. and landing on the reef. Often, the boat would be unable to get near Hynish, and would be forced to sail aimlessly round the coasts of Mull and Coll, looking for a safe mooring. Many preferred to eat all their daytime meals on the rock rather than risk another bout of nausea on the boat.
Once on the rock, the work progressed speedily. When a few of the supplies had been landed – including a smith’s forge, two anvils, quarrying equipment and shear poles for raising heavy beams – Alan plotted out a place where the barracks could stand. Boreholes were chiselled into the gneiss for the foundations of the barracks and the iron legs shaved and slotted into the rock. Eventually, after a great deal of heaving and pulling, the six giant poles were levered upwards and bound firmly into place. Most of the operation had been spent battering away at the rock, which was so striped with seams and flaws that it was almost impossible to make any straight cut. Alan had also made a small wooden hut to shelter the forge and landed as many of the materials as he felt could safely be stored on the rock. On 11 September, having battened down the barracks as securely as possible, he and the workmen left the rock for the winter. He returned briefly to Hynish, congratulated everyone on their achievements and sailed southwards ‘in the pleasing belief that the successful termination of our first season’s labours might be taken as an omen of future success’.
Two months later, while back in Edinburgh, Alan received a letter from Mr Hogben, the storekeeper at Hynish. ‘Dear Sir,’ it began, ‘I am extremely sorry to inform you, that the barrack erected on Skerryvore Rock has totally disappeared.’ It had been visible on 31 October, but the three following days had brought a driving west coast rain during which no one had been able to see the rock from Hynish. On the evening of 3 November, ‘the wind increased to a gale, with a great swell, and an extraordinary high tide. Yesterday (Sunday the 4th)…Mr Scott and Charles Barclay…got a momentary glimpse of the Rock through the spray, and both were of opinion that the barrack was gone. This was not credited by the workmen who had been employed at it, but this morning we found it to be the case; the Rock was pretty