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By Root 753 0

those men spared from quarrying or barracks-building were preparing the foundation pit. ‘A more unpromising prospect of success in any work than that which presented itself at the commencement of our labours, I can scarcely conceive,’ Alan wrote, gloomily. ‘The great irregularity of the surface, and the extraordinary hardness and unworkable nature of the material, together with the want of room on the Rock, greatly added to the other difficulties and delays, which could not fail, even under the most favourable circumstances, to attend the excavation of a foundation-pit on a rock at the distance of 12 miles from the land.’ As he pointed out, the stones of Skerryvore were four times as hard as that old lodestone of resistance, Aberdeen granite. Producing a levelled pit forty-two feet in diameter from a reef with fewer flat surfaces than the Cairngorms was not something any engineer, of whatever skill or brilliance, would relish.

After much deliberation, Alan selected the only site that seemed feasible and instructed the quarriers to begin digging. The process was much the same as for cutting the stones: drilling deep holes, priming them with powder, and retreating to a safe distance. Except that on Skerryvore, there was no safe distance; there were only a few yards of rock to either side, and then salt water as far as the eye could see. Alan took what precautions he could, including covering the mine-holes with netting and giving all the workmen protective fencing-masks. But it was not a comfortable time, being stuck on a hostile rock, surrounded by whirling shrapnel and a group of terrified workmen dressed like sword-fighters. Most alarming of all was the Atlantic itself. Gales on the east coast were at least prefaced with glowering clouds and bucking seas; out on the west, there would be a sudden, ominous lull, a spatter of rain, and then a wind strong enough to lift a grown man bodily off the rock. Alan and the workmen often found themselves bolting for the boats, leaving tools, materials and provisions scattered where they lay. Small wonder that when they returned to the dubious safety of the boat and the long journey home every evening, most of the men could be heard mumbling prayers. ‘Isolation from the world, in a situation of common danger, produces amongst most men a freer interchange of the feelings of dependence on the Almighty than is common in the more chilly intercourse of ordinary life,’ Alan noted wrily.

Once the surface of the rock had been levelled, the masons began picking out a pit. The foundations did not have to be deep – no more than fifteen inches – but it was still finicky work, particularly when the gneiss could blunt a pick in three blows. Alan wanted the lip of the pit to fit so closely to the stones of the tower that nothing – no wave, no stones, no insinuating rain – could slide between the two. After 217 days, the foundations were finally completed. Several of the workmen were so proud of what they had achieved they declared themselves sorry to see it covered up. Alan confessed modestly to his father that ‘I have carefully examined the whole of the foundation Pit which is now complete, and a beautiful piece of work, I must pronounce it, though perhaps I ought not to say so…I believe there is no such foundation in Europe for hardness and fineness of surface.’ In fact, it pleased him so much that he threatened to spend an extra night on the rock, ‘not because my presence there is particularly necessary for any special purpose, but simply because I have seldom visited it with so much satisfaction.’ Fortunately, the Hynish doctor dissuaded him.

The final duty of the season was to fix and carve out a mooring place. Every morning the workmen still made the hazardous scramble from the row-boat to the rock, carrying tools, materials and ungainly cranes up the sides as best they could. One man bitterly compared the slippery climb up the reef to shinning up the neck of a bottle. Since the best place for a landing site was underwater at high tide, it needed to be blasted quickly and decisively. Alan