The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [91]
On 7 July, the Duke of Argyll and his entourage came to lay the foundation stone and inspect the progress of the works. Alan was flattered by their interest in the works, but irritated that their visit would mean losing a good hour’s work through needless ceremonials. Afterwards, he wrote disconsolately, ‘Never did any day prove more unfortunate than yesterday…after the Duke, Duchess, his brother-in-law, Mr Sinclair, the Marquis of Lorn and his sister Lady Emma Campbell were all safely shipped and we had gone out a few miles we were forced to turn back at the Duchess’ instigation as she became alarmed. I was truly sorry for the poor Duke who resisted returning as long as he could and yielded most unwillingly as he was quite bent upon the whole enterprise.’ After the Duchess had recovered from her nerves, the Duke returned, this time only accompanied by his factor, and they ‘laid the first stone out with no ceremony but three cheers and a glass’.
The first four courses of black Tiree gneiss were laid with relative speed. Alan’s insistence on getting the blocks cut exactly to size paid off; within fourteen hours it was possible to lay eighty-five stones, and by the end of the season the tower had risen eight feet from its foundations. Much of the skill was in the preparation: each custom-cut stone was carefully allocated its own slot, none could be substituted for another, and every course fitted into its neighbour as neatly as the rings of a tree. As the work progressed, Alan found himself increasingly aware of Smeaton’s influence, and confessed to his father that ‘I now feel doubly anxious to visit the Eddystone, having laid my first course on a foundation which resembles Smeaton’s in many respects.’ He was aware that he could not afford to show weakness even now; everything Smeaton and Robert had done in their time he had to match or better. But it was more than just his father’s voice goading him, it was his own gathering self-belief, won through time and strength. At one stage, trapped on the ‘desert rock’ for five weeks, Alan discovered to his astonishment that he was actually enjoying himself.
The whole of the 1841 and 1842 seasons was spent landing, checking and fitting the stones for the light. It was heartwarming work. Most of the preparations for building had been so thorough that the tower was laid and fixed with spectacular rapidity. Some time was spent fitting up cranes to lift the higher stones to the top of the tower, the rest was spent mixing lime and pozzolana earth to give the strongest mortar possible. The fit of the stones was so perfect that Alan subsequently discovered only two joints where leaks had developed. Even more satisfactory was the discovery that each course only diverged by a sixteenth of an inch from his original calculations. He wrote happily to Robert in July 1841, ‘It gives me great pleasure to say that one more lighter load will land all the Solid on the Rock and that we shall then have 27,110 cubic feet of masonry on the Skerryvore, a quantity little short of the whole mass of the Bell Rock and more than double that of the Eddystone. We have been going on with great spirit. Double trips daily, or about 1,000 cubic feet a day landed on the Rock.’ Not that any of them could afford to be complacent; when work began again in 1842, Alan noticed that stones had been hurled from the sea into the unprotected top of the tower, over sixty feet above high water. In bad weather, the sea would snatch at the stones laid out at the base of the tower, and the workmen often had to mount midnight rescue operations to lift the stones out of the water’s reach.
On 21 July 1842, the last of the stones were landed. Four days later, the tower was finished. All that remained was to fit the great iron lantern, hoist