Bell Rock Lighthouse
Encyclopedia
Bell Rock Lighthouse is the world's oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse
and was built on Bell Rock (also known as Inchcape
) in the North Sea
, 11 miles (17.7 km) off the coast of Angus
, Scotland
, east of the Firth of Tay
. It was built by Robert Stevenson
between 1807 and 1810, and standing at 35 m high, the light is visible from 35 smi inland.
The masonry
work on which the lighthouse rests was constructed to such a high standard that it has not been replaced or adapted in 200 years. The lamps and reflectors were replaced in 1843, with the original equipment being used in the lighthouse at Cape Bonavista
, Newfoundland
where they are currently on display. The working of the lighthouse has been automated since 1988.
The lighthouse operated in tandem with a shore station, the Bell Rock Signal Tower, built in 1813 at the mouth of Arbroath harbour. Today this building houses the Signal Tower Museum
, a visitor centre detailing the history of the lighthouse.
The challenges faced in the building of the lighthouse have led to it being described as one of the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World
.
from Arbroath to install a warning bell on it. The bell lasted only one year before it was stolen by a Dutch pirate. This story is immortalized in The Inchcape Rock, a famous poem by 19th century poet Robert Southey
. The rock was the scene of many shipwrecks as it lies just below the surface of the sea for all but a few hours at low tide.
By the turn of the 18th century, it was estimated that the rocks were responsible for the wrecking of up to six ships every winter. In one storm alone, 70 ships were lost off the east coast of Scotland. The Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson
had proposed the construction of a lighthouse on Bell Rock in 1799, but cost concerns and the relatively radical nature of his proposal caused it to be shelved. However, the loss of the warship and all on board in 1804 resulted in a furore in Parliament which eventually led to legislation being passed in 1806 enabling construction to begin.
The lighthouse was built by Stevenson between 1807 and 1810 and the lamp was first lit on 1 February 1811. The design has some similarities to the earlier Eddystone Lighthouse
designed by John Smeaton
which was also built on an offshore reef using interlocking stones, but also contained newer features, such as rotating lights alternating between red and white. Later, the Chief Engineer on the project, John Rennie
, disputed the amount of credit that Stevenson received for the design—Rennie claimed that Stevenson's curve on the base of the lighthouse was inappropriate, though Stevenson had created the earlier designs based on the Eddystone.
For 20 hours of each day, while the rock was covered by up to 12 feet (3.7 m) of water, the men lived on a ship moored 1 miles (2 km) off the rock. The first task was to build a beacon house on tall wooden struts, so the men would have a place to stay on the island, instead of the time-consuming row to and from the ship each day and after an incident whereby one of the boats came adrift. The beacon house had places for 15 men. The foundations and beacon legs were raised during the first season. During the winter, stonemasons cut rocks for the lighthouse out of Aberdeen granite.
During the spring of 1808, work resumed. The beacon house barracks was completed and the first three courses of stone were laid. In the whole of the second season, there were only 80 hours of building work completed on the rock. During this time, before the barracks were completed, a young worker was knocked unconscious by a buoy ring and drowned. The boy was the prime breadwinner for the family; so Stevenson offered the now-vacant position to Alexander Scott, the younger brother of the drowned worker, who accepted.
In September 1808 John Bonnyman, a stonemason, had to have a finger amputated following an accident with the beam crane on the Rock; as recompense for this mishap he was later appointed one of the first lighthouse keepers.
The beacon house withstood a heavy storm, and due to this, the men agreed to work on the Sabbath. Although they did not have faith in Stevenson initially, his design redeemed their faith.
Stevenson was frustrated by a visit from Rennie, in 1809, whom he saw as interfering with his work. As a strategy to ward off further visits, he wrote Rennie a total of 82 letters, asking detailed questions about a large range of construction issues (including what type of window putty and locks to use). Rennie replied in detail to every letter, but Stevenson largely ignored the replies.
In June 1809 one of the principal builders, Michael Wishart, was caught beneath a crane when it collapsed, and his feet were severely injured, preventing him from working further on the project. He asked Stevenson if he could be appointed lighthouse keeper and he ultimately took up a position as assistant keeper in 1811.
Work stopped on 22 August 1809 with a large part of the tower completed.
In January 1810, Stevenson's twins died of whooping cough, and two weeks later his youngest daughter Janet also died of this disease. Rennie wrote Stevenson a consoling letter. During this final period of construction the lighthouse became something of a tourist attraction. Many people were anxious to see the completion of the tallest off-shore lighthouse in the world. In this final season, while the men were staying in the beacon house, a 7 hour storm struck. Worker Charles Henderson was lost, and his body was never found. Work was finally completed, with a total of about 2500 granite
stones used during the construction. All stones were carried by one horse, named Bassey.
helicopter XG501, crewed by Flight Sergeant P.A. Beart
and Sergeant E.F. Hall, departed from RAF Leuchars
at 09:35 to perform a sea winching exercise at the Bell Rock lighthouse. At approximately 10:00, the helicopter's tail rotor struck the anemometer on the top of the lighthouse, and as a result the aircraft crashed into the sea. The incident was witnessed by a second helicopter which immediately transmitted a distress call and flew to the scene of the crash. In response to the distress signal, four aircraft, a further two Sycamore helicopters, an RAF rescue launch and three lifeboats searched the area, recovering the body of XG501's navigator. The body of the pilot was not recovered. The lighthouse was damaged, including the loss of its light, but its keepers remained uninjured. Due to bad weather, the lighthouse could not be repaired until after 20 December, when conditions permitted delivery of supplies.
re-worded a traditional song called The Mermaid's Tale, and set the scene on Bell Rock. The first verse goes:
On David Arkenstone
's album Myths and Legends, one of the tracks is titled "The Legend of Bell Rock"
Lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....
and was built on Bell Rock (also known as Inchcape
Inchcape
Inchcape or the Bell Rock is a notorious reef off the east coast of Angus, Scotland, near Dundee and Fife . Bell Rock Lighthouse, an automatic lighthouse, occupies the reef...
) in the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
, 11 miles (17.7 km) off the coast of Angus
Angus
Angus is one of the 32 local government council areas of Scotland, a registration county and a lieutenancy area. The council area borders Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross and Dundee City...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, east of the Firth of Tay
Firth of Tay
The Firth of Tay is a firth in Scotland between the council areas of Fife, Perth and Kinross, the City of Dundee and Angus, into which Scotland's largest river in terms of flow, the River Tay, empties....
. It was built by Robert Stevenson
Robert Stevenson (civil engineer)
Robert Stevenson FRSE MInstCE FSAS MWS FGS FRAS FSA was a Scottish civil engineer and famed designer and builder of lighthouses.One of his finest achievements was the construction of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.-Early life:...
between 1807 and 1810, and standing at 35 m high, the light is visible from 35 smi inland.
The masonry
Masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone, marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, stucco, and...
work on which the lighthouse rests was constructed to such a high standard that it has not been replaced or adapted in 200 years. The lamps and reflectors were replaced in 1843, with the original equipment being used in the lighthouse at Cape Bonavista
Cape Bonavista
Cape Bonavista is a headland located on the east coast of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.It is located at the northeastern tip of the Bonavista Peninsula, which separates Trinity Bay to the south from Bonavista Bay to the north.The nearby town of...
, Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
where they are currently on display. The working of the lighthouse has been automated since 1988.
The lighthouse operated in tandem with a shore station, the Bell Rock Signal Tower, built in 1813 at the mouth of Arbroath harbour. Today this building houses the Signal Tower Museum
Signal Tower Museum
-Working life:Originally built in 1813 as a base of operations for the famous Bell Rock Lighthouse, the Signal Tower housed the families of the keepers stationed on the 'rock', along with the vital shore staff who ran the tender...
, a visitor centre detailing the history of the lighthouse.
The challenges faced in the building of the lighthouse have led to it being described as one of the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World
Seven Wonders of the Industrial World
Seven Wonders of the Industrial World is a 7-part British documentary/docudrama television miniseries that originally aired from to on BBC...
.
History
According to legend, the rock is called Bell Rock because of a 14th century attempt by the abbotAbbot
The word abbot, meaning father, is a title given to the head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery...
from Arbroath to install a warning bell on it. The bell lasted only one year before it was stolen by a Dutch pirate. This story is immortalized in The Inchcape Rock, a famous poem by 19th century poet Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
. The rock was the scene of many shipwrecks as it lies just below the surface of the sea for all but a few hours at low tide.
By the turn of the 18th century, it was estimated that the rocks were responsible for the wrecking of up to six ships every winter. In one storm alone, 70 ships were lost off the east coast of Scotland. The Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson
Robert Stevenson (civil engineer)
Robert Stevenson FRSE MInstCE FSAS MWS FGS FRAS FSA was a Scottish civil engineer and famed designer and builder of lighthouses.One of his finest achievements was the construction of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.-Early life:...
had proposed the construction of a lighthouse on Bell Rock in 1799, but cost concerns and the relatively radical nature of his proposal caused it to be shelved. However, the loss of the warship and all on board in 1804 resulted in a furore in Parliament which eventually led to legislation being passed in 1806 enabling construction to begin.
The lighthouse was built by Stevenson between 1807 and 1810 and the lamp was first lit on 1 February 1811. The design has some similarities to the earlier Eddystone Lighthouse
Eddystone Lighthouse
Eddystone Lighthouse is on the treacherous Eddystone Rocks, south west of Rame Head, United Kingdom. While Rame Head is in Cornwall, the rocks are in Devon and composed of Precambrian Gneiss....
designed by John Smeaton
John Smeaton
John Smeaton, FRS, was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist...
which was also built on an offshore reef using interlocking stones, but also contained newer features, such as rotating lights alternating between red and white. Later, the Chief Engineer on the project, John Rennie
John Rennie (father)
John Rennie was a Scottish civil engineer who designed many bridges, canals, and docks.-Early years:Rennie, a farmer's younger son, was born at Phantassie, near East Linton, East Lothian, Scotland, and showed a taste for mechanics at a very early age, and was allowed to spend much time in the...
, disputed the amount of credit that Stevenson received for the design—Rennie claimed that Stevenson's curve on the base of the lighthouse was inappropriate, though Stevenson had created the earlier designs based on the Eddystone.
Construction
In 1807 Stevenson hired 60 men, including a blacksmith so that the pick axes used to cut the foundations could be re-sharpened on site. Stevenson did not want to use black powder as it might have damaged the rock on which the lighthouse was to stand. They initially set sail on 17 August 1807, to be away for two months. Much to their displeasure, Stevenson requested, in order for the lighthouse to be completed in time and on budget, that they work on the Sabbath. Despite Stevenson's insistence that they were doing the Lord's work, most of the men refused on the grounds that such an action would be ill received by God. In the end the project came in 50% above the original £42,000 (2009: £) budget.For 20 hours of each day, while the rock was covered by up to 12 feet (3.7 m) of water, the men lived on a ship moored 1 miles (2 km) off the rock. The first task was to build a beacon house on tall wooden struts, so the men would have a place to stay on the island, instead of the time-consuming row to and from the ship each day and after an incident whereby one of the boats came adrift. The beacon house had places for 15 men. The foundations and beacon legs were raised during the first season. During the winter, stonemasons cut rocks for the lighthouse out of Aberdeen granite.
During the spring of 1808, work resumed. The beacon house barracks was completed and the first three courses of stone were laid. In the whole of the second season, there were only 80 hours of building work completed on the rock. During this time, before the barracks were completed, a young worker was knocked unconscious by a buoy ring and drowned. The boy was the prime breadwinner for the family; so Stevenson offered the now-vacant position to Alexander Scott, the younger brother of the drowned worker, who accepted.
In September 1808 John Bonnyman, a stonemason, had to have a finger amputated following an accident with the beam crane on the Rock; as recompense for this mishap he was later appointed one of the first lighthouse keepers.
The beacon house withstood a heavy storm, and due to this, the men agreed to work on the Sabbath. Although they did not have faith in Stevenson initially, his design redeemed their faith.
Stevenson was frustrated by a visit from Rennie, in 1809, whom he saw as interfering with his work. As a strategy to ward off further visits, he wrote Rennie a total of 82 letters, asking detailed questions about a large range of construction issues (including what type of window putty and locks to use). Rennie replied in detail to every letter, but Stevenson largely ignored the replies.
In June 1809 one of the principal builders, Michael Wishart, was caught beneath a crane when it collapsed, and his feet were severely injured, preventing him from working further on the project. He asked Stevenson if he could be appointed lighthouse keeper and he ultimately took up a position as assistant keeper in 1811.
Work stopped on 22 August 1809 with a large part of the tower completed.
In January 1810, Stevenson's twins died of whooping cough, and two weeks later his youngest daughter Janet also died of this disease. Rennie wrote Stevenson a consoling letter. During this final period of construction the lighthouse became something of a tourist attraction. Many people were anxious to see the completion of the tallest off-shore lighthouse in the world. In this final season, while the men were staying in the beacon house, a 7 hour storm struck. Worker Charles Henderson was lost, and his body was never found. Work was finally completed, with a total of about 2500 granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
stones used during the construction. All stones were carried by one horse, named Bassey.
1955 Helicopter accident
On 15 December 1955, RAF Bristol SycamoreBristol Sycamore
-See also:-External links:* on the Bristol Sycamore* on the Bristol Sycamore*...
helicopter XG501, crewed by Flight Sergeant P.A. Beart
and Sergeant E.F. Hall, departed from RAF Leuchars
RAF Leuchars
RAF Leuchars is the most northerly air defence station in the United Kingdom. It is located in Leuchars, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland, near to the university town of St Andrews.-Operations:...
at 09:35 to perform a sea winching exercise at the Bell Rock lighthouse. At approximately 10:00, the helicopter's tail rotor struck the anemometer on the top of the lighthouse, and as a result the aircraft crashed into the sea. The incident was witnessed by a second helicopter which immediately transmitted a distress call and flew to the scene of the crash. In response to the distress signal, four aircraft, a further two Sycamore helicopters, an RAF rescue launch and three lifeboats searched the area, recovering the body of XG501's navigator. The body of the pilot was not recovered. The lighthouse was damaged, including the loss of its light, but its keepers remained uninjured. Due to bad weather, the lighthouse could not be repaired until after 20 December, when conditions permitted delivery of supplies.
In culture
Scottish musician Alastair McDonaldAlastair McDonald
Alastair McDonald is a Scottish banjo-playing folk/jazz musician, probably most famous for his recordings of Jim MacLean's folk songs, such as The Barras and The massacre of Glencoe, but also for some humorous songs, such as the jazz comedy song Sam the skull, about a Glasgow cat.McDonald has...
re-worded a traditional song called The Mermaid's Tale, and set the scene on Bell Rock. The first verse goes:
- My father was the keeper of the Bell Rock Light
- And he married a mermaid one dark night
- And from this union there came three
- A codCodCod is the common name for genus Gadus, belonging to the family Gadidae, and is also used in the common name for various other fishes. Cod is a popular food with a mild flavor, low fat content and a dense, flaky white flesh. Cod livers are processed to make cod liver oil, an important source of...
ling and a kipperKipperA kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold smoked.In the United Kingdom, in Japan, and in some North American regions they are often eaten for breakfast...
and the other was me
On David Arkenstone
David Arkenstone
David Arkenstone is an American New Age musician. His music is primarily instrumental, with occasional vocalizations. He was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 1, 1952. He has three children—Quillon, Dashiell and Valinor—with his first wife, Julie...
's album Myths and Legends, one of the tracks is titled "The Legend of Bell Rock"
External links
- A Reference Site for Stevenson's Bell Rock Lighthouse
- Northern Lighthouse Board history of the light
- Biographical Sketch of the Late Robert Stevenson: Civil Engineer by his son Alan Stevenson, Read at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, at the meeting of 17 February 1851, and dealing at length with the Bell Rock Lighthouse. From Google Book SearchGoogle Book SearchGoogle Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October...
- Christopher Spencer, Who Built the Bell Rock Lighthouse?, BBC, British history, Empire and Sea Power, 2003.
- The Building of the Bell Rock from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson