LIGHT-HOUSE***


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Transcriber's note

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

      Text enclosed by tilde characters is underlined
      (~underlined~).

      A carat character is used to denote superscription. A
      single character following the carat is superscripted
      (example: THO^S).





[Illustration: BELL ROCK LIGHT HOUSE

_DURING A STORM FROM THE NORTH EAST_.

Drawn by J. M. W. Turner R. A.

Engraved by J. Horsburgh.]


AN ACCOUNT OF THE BELL ROCK LIGHT-HOUSE,

Including the Details of the Erection and Peculiar Structure
of That Edifice.

To Which Is Prefixed a Historical View of the Institution and
Progress of the Northern Light-Houses.

Illustrated with Twenty-Three Engravings.

Drawn Up by Desire of the Commissioners of the Northern Light-Houses,

by

ROBERT STEVENSON,

Civil Engineer;

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh;
Member of the Society of Scotish Antiquaries, of the
Wernerian Natural History Society,
and of the Geological Society of London;

Engineer to the Northern Light-House Board, and to the Convention
of Royal Boroughs of Scotland.







Edinburgh:
Printed for Archibald Constable & Co. Edinburgh;
Hurst, Robinson & Co. 90. Cheapside; and Josiah Taylor, 50. High
Holborn,
London.

1824.




TO

THE KING.


 _SIRE_,

_It is with much diffidence that the author now lays before Your
Majesty, an Account of the arduous national undertaking of erecting a
Light-house on the Bell Rock,--a sunk reef, lying about eleven miles
from the shore, and so situated as to have long proved an object of
dread to mariners on the eastern coast of Scotland, especially when
making for the Friths of Forth and Tay._

_This edifice being of the utmost consequence to the safety of
Your Majesty’s Ships of War upon the North Sea station, and of the
commercial shipping of this part of the empire, he presumes to hope
for Your Majesty’s favourable acceptance of his work. From the known
partiality, also, of Your Majesty for naval excursions, which so
recently led the Royal Squadron within a comparatively short distance
of the Bell Rock Light-house, in the course of Your Majesty’s most
gracious Visit to your ancient Kingdom of Scotland, he flatters himself
that Your Majesty may feel an additional interest in the subject of
this volume._

_The Introduction to this work brings generally under Your Majesty’s
notice, the important labours of the Scottish Light-house Board,
appointed by an act of the 26th Parliament of Your Majesty’s
illustrious FATHER. Since that period, Light-house stations have been
partially extended over the whole northern shores of Your Majesty’s
British dominions, from Inchkeith in the Firth  of Forth, to the Isle
of Man in the Irish Sea, including in this circuit the Hebrides, and
Orkney and Shetland Islands. Much, however, still remains to be done;
and the Board is gradually proceeding, as the state of its funds will
permit, in placing additional Sea-Lights on certain intermediate points
of the coast._

_It cannot fail to be gratifying to Your Majesty to learn, as the
result of the exertions of this Board, that the mariner may now
navigate those regions with a degree of security and confidence quite
unknown to Your Majesty’s Royal Ancestor JAMES THE FIFTH, when he
sailed around this coast in the 16th century, or even, at a recent
period, to Your Majesty’s Royal Brother WILLIAM HENRY Duke of Clarence,
when in early life he traversed those seas._

_With unfeigned sentiments of loyalty and attachment, the author
subscribes himself,_

 _Your MAJESTY’S