[44] Alan Stevenson, “Account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse” (ed. 1848), p. 41.
For various reasons the attention of the Commissioners of Northern Lights had been early directed to this formidable reef; and in 1814 they had determined to mark its locality by the erection of a lighthouse. It was visited in this same year by some of the members of the Commission, accompanied by one whose name alone is sufficient to render the visit ever memorable—Sir Walter Scott. He was much struck with the desolateness of the situation, which he thought infinitely surpassed that of the Bell Rock or the Eddystone.
Owing, perhaps, to the difficulty of the enterprise, it was deferred until the autumn of 1834, when Mr. Alan Stevenson was authorized to commence a preliminary inspection, which he did not complete until 1835. This difficulty proceeded not only from the position, but from the nature of the reef itself.
It is true that the distance from the mainland was three miles less in the case of Skerryvore than in that of the Bell Rock; but the barren and over-populated island of Tyree did not offer the resources of the eastern coast, nor a safe and commodious port like that of Arbroath. The engineers were therefore compelled to erect, at the nearest and most favourable point of Tyree, a quay and a small harbour, with temporary cabins for the workmen, and storehouses of every kind; all whose materials, excepting only stone—and even the supply of _that_ failed after awhile—required to be transported from distant parts.
The first and most embarrassing, perhaps, of the numerous questions which present themselves to the engineer when entering upon the construction of a lighthouse, are those of the _height_ and the _mass_. In the days of Smeaton, when the best light in use was that of common candles, the elevation beyond a certain point could not be of any utility; while in 1835 the application of the reflector and the lens, by assisting in the extension and diffusion of the light, rendered, on the contrary, a considerable elevation both necessary and desirable.
It was therefore decided that the height of the Skerryvore should be 135 feet above the highest tides, so as to command a horizon visible for a radius of eighteen miles. The diameter of the base was fixed at 42 feet, and that of the topmost story at 16 feet; consequently the masonry of the tower would be double that of the Bell Rock, and four and a half times that of the Eddystone.