The experience of this day’s hard passage to the floating-light strongly impressed the writer with the inconveniency and danger arising from the want of a proper tender, which could be cast loose at pleasure, and brought to the lee-side of the rock, and could, at all times, be moored nearer than it would have been safe or proper to have risked a vessel of the description of the floating-light. Another circumstance, no less deeply interesting to the safety of those on the rock, was the erection of the beacon-house, as a place of refuge in cases like the present. Here the writer could not help congratulating himself not only upon the near prospect of completing this work, but also on the perseverance with which he had maintained the indispensable necessity of the erection of the beacon. He was aware of the well grounded fears for the safety of all concerned, in the event of its being washed away by the sea; but, without such an erection on the Bell Rock, it is impossible to describe the continual hazard which must have attended the undertaking, or to determine the period when works so peculiarly situate, and especially so low in the water, might have been brought to a conclusion.
[Sidenote: Eighteen of the artificers decline embarking for the rock.]
[Sidenote: The boats proceed with eight.]
The bell rung this morning at 5 o’clock, but the writer must acknowledge, from the circumstances of yesterday, that its sound was extremely unwelcome. This appears also to have been the feelings of the artificers, for when they came to be mustered, out of twenty-six, only eight, besides the foreman and seamen, appeared upon deck, to accompany the writer to the rock. Such are the baneful effects of any thing like misfortune or accident connected with a work of this description. The use of argument to persuade the men to embark, in cases of this kind, would have been out of place, as it is not only discomfort, or even the risk of the loss of a limb, but life itself, that becomes the question. The boats, notwithstanding the thinness of our ranks, left the vessel at half-past 5. The rough weather of yesterday having proved but a summer’s gale, the wind came to-day in gentle breezes, yet the atmosphere being cloudy, it had not a very favourable appearance. The boats reached the rock at 6 A. M., and the eight artificers who landed, were employed in clearing out the bat-holes for the beacon-house, and had a very prosperous tide of four hours work, being the longest yet experienced by half an hour.