Bell Rock

Scotland’s Proudest Sentinel

©Elinor DeWire

Robert Stevenson first saw treacherous Bell Rock at the age of 22, as he accompanied Scotland's first lighthouse engineer, Thomas Smith, on an annual inspection of seamarks in 1794. The rock lay 10-miles west of the Firth of Tay and was 16-feet submerged at high tide. It had devoured countless vessels with its elusive behavior. Young Stevenson was filled with dread as he watched its stealthy pinnacles disappear and resurface in a diabolical game of briny hide and seek. No peril in Britain more urgently needed to be marked. Little did Stevenson know he was destined to conquer Bell Rock in one of the greatest achievements in maritime engineering.

Early Caledonians named the devious reef Inchcape, but a persistent legend about the venerable Abbot of Aberbrothock, John Gedy, gave it the name Bell Rock. He hung a bell on Inchcape in the 1300s to warn mariners of its rocky claws, but a villainous pirate named Ralph the Rover removed the bell to please an idle whim. Years later, his cruel joke forgotten, Sir Ralph came upon Inchcape in his own vessel and perished. The popular legend was later immortalized in a lengthy poem by Robert Southey who accurately captured the sly behavior of the Inchcape at low tide, when only the barest tips of its pinnacles showed — Without either sign or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell, They did not move the Inchcape Bell. (entire poem)

Robert Stevenson had been appointed assistant lighthouse engineer to Thomas Smith in 1791 by the newly-formed Scottish Northern Lighthouse Board. He had quickly absorbed all that his skilled master could teach him about the science of lighthouse construction and had risen to a high level of respect among his peers. His work at the remote lighthouse sites of Little Cumbrae, Pentland Skerries and Cloch had so endeared him to the Commissioners of Northern Lights that they entrusted him with the development of the Bell Rock project, despite the fact that he held no University Degree and had never passed a Civil Engineering exam. In 1800, only months after seventy vessels had piled up on vicious Bell Rock in one single storm, Stevenson landed on it for the first time to survey for possible sites for the proposed lighthouse. The need for a Bell Rock sentinel was more urgent than ever. Stevenson determined that a masonry tower approximately one hundred feet tall could be built on the higher part of the rock for about 42,000 pounds sterling. He suggested a toll to raise part of the money, but it was 1806 before a satisfactory plan could be agreed upon in Parliament.

The authorizing bill provided for a Treasury loan of 25,000 pounds sterling and a toll of 11 1/2d per British ton and 3d per foreign ton to be levied on all vessels passing the rock. In the interim, Stevenson had married Thomas Smith's daughter, Jane. The couple had several children, one of whom would become the father of writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Robert Stevenson had thoroughly impressed the Northern Lighthouse Board with his supervision of the construction of lighthouses at Inchkeith and Start Point. With knowledge gleaned from a tour of English lights in 1802, Stevenson was able to design a tower and lighting apparatus for Bell Rock that combined the best ideas of the day. Among his recommendations were the superior Argand lamp, which produced a cleaner, brighter and less fuel-consuming light; silvered copper reflectors to replace fragile mirrors; copper or iron rooftops and galleries instead of flammable wood; and a tapered tower shape to reduce wave friction. Stevenson's vision into future marine construction was extraordinary, but as he began work on the bastion of Bell Rock, he could not have imagined he was building the model for future offshore masonry lighthouses worldwide.

Distinguished Scottish engineer John Rennie was appointed chief engineer of the Bell Rock project with Robert Stevenson as his assistant. Realizing the superior abilities of his younger colleague, Rennie voluntarily took a passive role in the design and construction of the lighthouse. Both Rennie and the now aging Thomas Smith were frequently consulted on matters concerning the tower, but in the end the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouse Board agreed Stevenson was "...due the honour of conceiving and executing the great work of the Bell Rock Lighthouse."

In August 1807, actual work on the rock began. A yard at Arbroath, twelve miles away, prepared the stone which was ferried out to the site by a sloop named the Smeaton, in honor of the builder of England's famous Eddystone Lighthouse. A 67-foot Prussian fishing boat had been refitted as a lightship to house workmen on station. Aptly named the Pharos, its unique anchor was to forever alter the shape of vessel moorings. Its crew had to contend with the North Sea's strong currents to keep the ship on station, so Stevenson devised a dead-weight anchor in the shape of a mushroom. It proved so successful it was adopted for lightship moorings worldwide. About fifty workmen lived aboard the Pharos in four-week intervals, chiseling away at the rock only at low tide. A forge was set up on the site to keep their pick axes sharp, but the sea allowed only fourteen workdays that first season. The men managed to erect a temporary beacon, built a 300-foot tramway for hauling the dressed stones, and began excavation of the 42-foot diameter tower foundation. Highlighting the year for Robert Stevenson had been the birth of another son, Alan, who would achieve engineering fame on another rock of ill-repute — Skerryvore.

The first stone of Bell Rock Lighthouse was laid on July 9, 1808, after "much labour and peril, and many an anxious hour," as Stevenson described it. The first twenty-five courses were solid through their interior to repel the heavy buffeting of the North Sea. Sandstone was deemed sufficiently strong for the center of these courses, but for the circumference Stevenson chose granite, making the Bell Rock monolith appear as if it grew out of the reef. In order to expedite work and avoid danger rowing in from the Pharos, Stevenson decided to convert the temporary beacon to a barracks for the workmen. Seasick members of the crew were happy to take up residence on the rock and, by the close of the 1808 season, had completed three courses of the tower. It was not, however, until July 1809 that the lighthouse rose above the neap tide line and the crew was permitted full workdays. This milestone was justifiably celebrated with the firing of guns, hoisting of flags, and imbibing of rum by all hands. The tower's solid cone of granite, through 25-courses, was completed by the end of 1809. Stevenson had prepared a special "Bell Rock mortar" for cementing the stone together in dovetail fashion. The final 66-courses were miraculously laid between May and July 1810.

Ironically, it was always Stevenson who was last off the rock at the close of each workday. Whether it was his devotion that inspired the workmen to toil so earnestly or their hatred of the rock, Stevenson was moved by their seemingly endless energies and later described them in his, Account of the Bell Rock as: "...somewhat like men stopping a breach in a wall to keep out an overwhelming flood." The upper portion of the lighthouse consisted of five rooms and the lantern room, each 11-feet in diameter. To deal with the problem of confined space as the final courses were laid, one of the workmen invented the balance crane to replace the derrick crane the tower had outgrown. Stevenson, with characteristic regard for his crew, was careful to give its inventor, Francis Watt, full credit for the idea.

February 1, 1811 was a proud occasion for both Stevenson, now 39 years old, and the Northern Lighthouse Board. Bell Rock lighthouse was illuminated for the first time that night, closing a great void of darkness over Scotland's rock-riddled entrance to the Firth of Tay. A principal keeper and three assistant keepers, rotating leave ashore, were assigned to the remarkable beacon — the first colored, flashing light in service. Its red and white beams alternated by means of a revolving chandelier upon which seven reflectors and five red glass panels were attached. Scotland's first fogbells were also introduced on Bell Rock's christening night. Stevenson had ingeniously provided for their actuation by rigging them to the light's revolving mechanism. There would be no confusing Bell Rock with its neighboring beacons of Scotland's East Coast. Its great red and white eye blinked with predictable regularity, and its bell tolled out in remembrance of the legendary Abbot of Aberbrothock.

Some 400 visitors came to the lighthouse during 1812, among them Sir Walter Scott who was a commissioner of the Northern Lighthouse Board and a friend of Robert Stevenson. Scott was very impressed with Stevenson's masterpiece of engineering, though his entry to it had been somewhat risky, up a 30-foot rope ladder. When asked to sign the lighthouse record book the following morning, Scott composed a masterpiece all his own — "Pharos Loquitur." Five years later, a shiny brass ladder replaced the rope Sir Walter had climbed to record his tribute to Bell Rock.

Image of Bell Rock Lighthouse courtesy of the Northern Lighthouse Board

Robert Stevenson's achievement at Bell Rock was heralded worldwide as a milestone in pharology — the newly developed science of lighthouse construction and illumination — but his revolutionary ideas were to extend beyond the building of Bell Rock and into its keeper's realm. With the installation of the tower's unique reflector system, Stevenson realized that lightkeeping had reached a point of sophistication requiring its practitioners to be technically trained. Hence, Bell Rock became the official training station for new Scottish lightkeepers. They were to be between the ages of 21 and 35, of sound mind and body, and willing to endure the dangers and monotony of life on a sea washed rock. Bell Rock's resident keepers received a higher salary than others due to the added responsibility of training incoming keepers and maintaining the newest and most treacherous beacon in the British Isles.

With the completion of Bell Rock Lighthouse, a great void of knowledge in marine engineering had been closed. It would not be the most awesome of Scotland's wave-washed sentinels nor the most tormented. Of Skerryvore Lighthouse, the most awesome, Sir Walter Scott said, "...the Bell Rock [is] a joke to it." But Bell Rock Lighthouse was the first and oldest of many successful rock lights in the British Isles. Modernizations, such as a hyper-radial lens, electrification, RACON (radar-beacon) and a Tyfon fog signal have changed Bell Rock's appearance through the years, but not its stalwart character. Perhaps the best witness to its enduring importance can be found in the tower library — an inscribed, marble bust of Robert Stevenson and a signed copy of his Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.

©Elinor DeWire, 1985

No part or all of this article may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.

This article appeared in Mobil Compass, No.3, 1985 and The Highlander, May/June 1988.