A little beyond there is a beach known incongruously as Happy Valley. The rocks which surround it have been rolled by the sea into fantastical shapes, such as chairs, shelves, pools, secret hiding places. It is a very different place from the curvaceous surfers’ haven on the other side of the island. There is no sand here and no flotsam, only the sea and the wind. Up above the beach is a black promontory of rock scattered with fragments of seashell and grass nibbled close by the ubiquitous sheep. On a mild day in early October, it is still too windy to light a cigarette. From the top, if you squint out towards the watery horizon, you can see a flash of spray and a tiny grey spike. It seems barely there; it is the white water below it rather than the thin pencilled line that draws your attention. Beyond it there is nothing at all.

  Two hundred years ago, when the stones in Happy Valley were a little less smooth, that distant stub brought its rewards. Skerryvore wrecked ships year after year, and every time it did so, the fragments – wood, cargo, broken bodies – would drift towards Tiree and fetch up on one of the nearby beaches. By the 1830s, the rewards from the reef were considered so reliable that, as Robert had found on Sanday, rents on the Hynish side of the island remained higher than elsewhere. The east side stayed poor; the west side got rich on a steady harvest of wreck. When the NLB’s clerk of works came to assess the damage done, he calculated that at least thirty ships had been destroyed on Skerryvore between 1804 and 1844. He drew up a list, though, as he pointed out, it was not comprehensive. ‘Very many vessels were wrecked on this dangerous reef whose names could never be learned,’ he wrote later, ‘and of which nothing but portions of the drift wood or cargo came ashore; and there have, no doubt, been many shipwrecks of which not a single trace has been left. Nothing, indeed, is more probable than that many of the foreign vessels whose course lay through the North Irish Channel, and whose fate has been briefly and vaguely described, as “foundered at sea”, have met their fate on the infames scopuli of the Skerryvore.’ The Tiree fishermen, he noted, were in the ‘constant practice’ of sailing out to Skerryvore after a storm in the hope of finding wreck trapped in the rocks. Time and the lighthouse have evened out conditions on the island, and now there are few indications of prosperity in Happy Valley.

  By the 1830s, Skerryvore had been bothering the consciences of the Commissioners of Northern Lights for over forty years. Letters pleading for a light had been arriving in George Street almost on a weekly basis. Suggested designs for towers made of stone, cast iron, even bronze were submitted by impatient amateurs. By 1835, when the Board invited interested parties to submit their opinions, the stream broadened to a flood. The Commanders of Revenue Cruisers, the Committee of the Glasgow Chambers of Commerce and the Chairman of the Liverpool Ship Owners Association all pressed the point. ‘I have frequently passed the rocks of Skerrivore,’ wrote the Inspector General of the Leith Coastguard, Captain Knight, ‘and consider them of so dangerous a nature and so completely in the direct Track of Vessels that I have no doubt many are wrecked on them and never heard of.’ James Melville, captain of the Revenue Cruiser Swift, agreed: ‘I am fully satisfied that there is not a station on that Coast, where a light is required more urgently for the safety of Vessels than upon these dangerous Rocks.’ The Board recorded only the petitions of the governmental organisations and the shipowners. The sailors who were most at risk from Skerryvore – the islanders and the local fishermen – stayed silent. Money and politics, as usual, shouted loudest, but there was also a darker undercurrent to the islanders’ silence. In part, it was the old suspicion of meddling southern men and the lure of profits from wreck. In part, it was still the settled belief that there was no need for a light on the Skerryvore rocks; God had placed those rocks there, God had meant them to be a warning to the unwary, and if God had meant a lighthouse to be built on the rocks, he would have put it there himself. Sailors and islanders are traditionally fatalistic. In the case of Skerryvore they had good reason to be.

  Robert Stevenson had visited the reef twice: once in 1804, and once during his pleasure-tripping inspection tour with Sir Walter Scott in 1814. Scott’s glum assessment of the place (‘a most desolate position for a lighthouse – the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it’) had not changed in the intervening years. Occasionally, the subject would reappear in NLB meetings and then would be quietly shelved again. Robert had never doubted the need for a light on Skerryvore. The Commissioners, ensconced in Edinburgh and surrounded by fearful accounts of Skerryvore’s reputation, were more cautious. The expense was ridiculous, they argued. They had projects of equal urgency to consider and they were still unsatisfied that a light was fully feasible. Finally, in 1834, they sent Robert back to Skerryvore, this time to survey the rock in more detail and to report on possible sites for a light. Robert set off for the isles, dragging Tom and Alan in tow.

  On his return to George Street, he presented his report:

  The Rocks of Skerrivore lie 12 miles South of the Island of Tyrii and about 35 Miles from either of the Light Houses of Barrahead and Rhins of Islay. This Reef forms a very great Bar to the Navigation of the outer passage of the Highlands, a Track which is used chiefly by His Majesty’s Vessels of War and first Class of Merchantmen. It is also an obstacle of no small magnitude to the foreign Trade of the Clyde and Mersey. The Rock on which it is proposed to build this Light House forms the foreland of an extensive track of foul ground lying off the Coast of Argyllshire. This reef has long been the terror of the Mariner, but the Erection of a Light House upon Skerrivore would at once change its Character and render it a rallying point of the Shipping which frequents these seas.

  The reef, he concluded, ran for seven miles in total, much of which was permanently submerged underwater. Skerryvore itself was only the highest of a cluster of rocks: Boinshly (the ‘deceitful bottom’) lay around three and a half miles away from the proposed site; Bo-rhua (the ‘red rock’) lay between Boinshly and the main reef.

  Skerryvore ran for around 280 feet in total, much of which remained underwater even at low tide. Between each of the major rocks flowed narrow channels of water that looked tempting enough for small-boat sailors but were primed with underwater hazards to trap the unwary. None of the three separate reefs made an easy site on which to build. The main reef was pocked with peaks and gullies and surrounded with a rampart of detached rocks. Much of the surface was so irregular in places that the movement of the water flung spouts of water on to the reef like the blowholes of whales. And on those parts of the reef that took the full weight of the sea, the rocks had been worn smooth, almost icy. Even more awkwardly, the sea had eroded much of the reef’s underwater surface, gashing it with deep subterranean trenches under apparently solid gneiss. As a site for a lighthouse, Skerryvore could hardly have been worse.

  Robert, however, seemed confident of his chances. At the end of his report, he blithely claimed that ‘the Erection of a Light House on the Chief of the Skerrivore rocks is not only a practicable work, but one which will be much less difficult and expensive than that of the Bell Rock.’ It was a strange judgement. Robert, of all people, understood the hazards of building tower lights and knew not to underestimate their complexities. Admittedly, unlike the Bell Rock, some part of Skerryvore was always out of the water even at high tide. But in every other respect, Skerryvore was an altogether more daunting proposition. The Bell Rock was at least one solid reef, whereas Skerryvore lay scattered like miniature mountains over many miles of sea. The Bell Rock was also sheltered a little by the bulk of the east coast, while Skerryvore was stuck right in the path of every Atlantic gale roaring over the seas from Newfoundland. Those storms, as Robert well knew, could reach a pitch of ferocity and destructiveness that the North Sea rarely matched. More seriously, the area surrounding the Bell Rock was well known and well surveyed. The waters around Skerryvore, by contrast, lacked even the most basic soundings. Admiralty charts of the west coast, the Minch and the Hebridean Sea still contain warnings that much of the area has not been surveyed since 1856. As Alan noted, they had to begin from scratch with Skerryvore. During the preliminary surveys of 1834,

  several vessels came so near the Rocks as to cause, in the minds of the surveyors, who witnessed their temerity, serious fears for their safety. On one occasion in particular, a large vessel belonging to Yarmouth, with a cargo of timber, was actually boarded between Mackenzie’s Rock and the main Rock of Skerryvore by the surveyors, who warned the Master of his danger in having so nearly approached these rocks, of the existence of which his chart gave no indication. On another occasion, a vessel belonging to Newcastle was boarded while passing between Bo-Rhua and the main Rock; and so little indeed had the Master (whose chart terminated with the main rock and shewed nothing of Bo-Rhua) been dreaming of danger, or fancying that he was in a cable’s length of the reef, that he was found lying at ease on the companion, enjoying his pipe, with his wife beside him knitting stockings.

  Perhaps the worst hazard of all at Skerryvore was the lack of any adequate shelter. The Bell Rock works had been well equipped with all necessary materials – granite from Aberdeen and Edinburgh, boats and supplies from Leith and a well-trained workforce drawn from the many fishing villages along the east coast. Skerryvore only had Tiree. From an engineer’s point of view, the island was a dismal prospect. It had no harbour and no shelter for shipping. It had no raw materials. Everything, from stone to wood to workers, had to be imported. The land was sandy, and the trees were brought by boat. ‘It is said,’ noted Alan, ‘that this total absence of fuel in Tyree is the result of the reckless manner in which it was wasted in former days in the preparation of whisky; but, however this may be, certain it is that the want of fuel greatly depresses the condition of the people.’ If the NLB seriously intended to build a light near the island, then ‘craftsmen of every sort were to be transported, houses were to be built for their reception, provisions and fuel were to be imported, and tools and implements of every kind were to be made.’

  Perhaps Robert’s belief that a light on Skerryvore would be a simple business was merely a piece of shrewd politicking, designed to lull the Commissioners into advancing the money. If so, it was not a theory that worked. They peered again at Robert’s estimate (£63,000), then at their balance books, and then at the glut of building works already underway. They set up a special Skerryvore Committee to deliberate further. Finally, they insisted on making a journey to Tiree in the summer of 1835 to see for themselves. During the trip, their steamer lost its boiler rivets just off Skerryvore itself, and a fire broke out in the boiler room, crippling the ship. Though the fire was eventually extinguished, the experience concentrated the minds of the Commissioners wonderfully. Being stuck on a disabled ship just off the most dangerous rocks in Scotland was, they decided, a remarkably persuasive argument for a light on the Skerryvore, no matter what the expense.

  The person elected as resident engineer for the works, however, was not Robert, it was Alan. By 1835, Robert Stevenson was sixty-three, still as energetic as ever, but clearly too old to spend four years heaving stones around on a sea-drenched reef in mid-ocean. In the twenty-four years that had passed since he completed the Bell Rock his business had swelled, his standing increased and his children had grown up. The constant journeying had kept Robert fit. Time and fine living had given him substance without fat. In portraits, he had kept the fierce gaze of his youth, but gained a weathered glow to his cheeks. Somewhere in his expression there remained that strange deceptive twinkle of his youth. He felt no particular weakness and remained as sharp as ever in mind and limb. But, as he grudgingly acknowledged, he was in no position to attempt such an immense and potentially debilitating project. His professional aim over the last thirty years had been to build himself a reputation as a technical expert, to be an authority, not a builder’s mate. From the mid-1820s onwards, he had taken a loftier role both in private business and with the lighthouses. Having made his recommendations, he would move on, leaving a trusted band of Stevensonians to complete the work on his behalf. There was no longer any need for Robert to paddle through storms or quarrel over dovetails; there were others to do it for him. Besides, he had spent the last twelve years patiently training up his eldest son to take on exactly this kind of task.

  By 1835, Alan Stevenson had been an apprentice for seven years, Clerk of Works to the Northern Lighthouses for a further five and an equal partner to his father in the family business for two. At the age of twenty-eight, he had already designed and built seven lighthouses under Robert’s supervision, and had recently undertaken a complete review of all lens designs in the Scottish lights. His path to full qualification had been a weary one, dulled with bureaucracy and routine. But if his father remained hesitant about handing over full powers to Alan, the Commissioners didn’t. They trusted him, appreciated his quiet, incisive intellect, and believed in his future. Skerryvore, it was evident, was the perfect moment to launch Alan as an architect and engineer in his own right.

  Robert’s feelings towards his eldest son remained ambivalent. It was plain to Robert, as it was to anyone else who came in contact with him, that Alan was an exceptional young man, more than capable of shouldering the full burden of the Stevenson engineering business. But Robert veered between pride and incomprehension. He was well aware that Alan was clever; too clever, Robert considered, for his own good. Robert had never fully recovered from Alan’s early flash of independence and still fretted when he heard reports of Alan’s literary leanings or came across scribbled fragments of poetry. In 1828, alerted to a further bundle of verses, Robert wrote worriedly to Alan, reminding him that ‘This is a very precious time for you, Alan, in the study of elementary and technical books till you can no more forget them than that you have ten fingers and as many toes. It is a great pity that we too often let such opportunities slip. Yet surely there is nothing in your present circumstances that should distract your attention from the theory and practice of your profession.’ Alan was then twenty-one, had been an apprentice engineer for six years and showed no more inclination to take up a career in literature than he did for knitting. He loved the world and its sensations for their own sake, not as a substitute for his profession. But his enthusiasms bothered his father deeply. All the extraneous stuff of Alan’s life – the books, the poems, the obscure classical allusions he sometimes inserted into professional reports, the love of travelling and the soft-hearted thoughtfulness – were puzzling to Robert and at times downright suspect.

  The travel, in particular, worried Robert, and he occasionally vented his frustrations to others. While Alan was in France in 1824 working with the Fresnel brothers and touring engineering projects, Robert wrote to his assistant Alexander Slight, complaining that his son would have been more use at home in Scotland working on the new light at the Rinns of Islay than frittering away his time in foreign places: ‘His writing to you of his travels will naturally draw upon you the obligation of your opinion as to the amendment to be made by application and a steady pursuit of the immediate object in which he is engaged.’ If Robert alone couldn’t persuade Alan to sit down and behave as he should, in other words, he was going to have to recruit others to help concentrate his mind. No matter that Alan had taken the trip with Robert’s encouragement in the first place. While he remained out of sight, there was no telling what distractions he might find. Robert knew his son to be a talented and conscientious worker, but could not bring himself to trust him. So he imposed absurdly high standards on Alan, forcing him onwards to an endless succession of false summits, testing his loyalties again and again. Somewhere at the back of Robert’s exhortations, it is possible to detect a small note of fear.

  Despite all his efforts to do his father’s bidding, Alan could never entirely dampen his pleasure in the outside world. Travel brought out his romantic habits. Away from the suppressions of Edinburgh, he developed a sharp eye and a talent for details. Much of his time abroad was spent working, touring lighthouses in France, canals and bridges in Stockholm or roads in Moscow on the instruction of Robert or the Commissioners. While he remained away from home, Alan knew that Robert would be sitting irritably at home in Baxter Street, fussing over his studies and fearing for his morals. Confined within his father’s expectations so much of the time, he did what most clever children do and turned himself into an astute psychologist. He learned to speak Robert’s language and realised that the best way of pacifying him was to anticipate his worries. He would write home often, giving descriptions of the works he had seen and the people he had met and inserting the odd reassuring allusion to Robert’s works. He compared the superiority of Scottish engineering to the pathetic specimens he found abroad, made disparaging mention of Popish practices and usually concluded with a homesick joke or two. He was usually careful to include a brief account of his attendance at church, and to pick up on a couple of points from the sermon. If he was tempted to quote poetry, he confined it to short bursts of Sir Walter Scott. Sometime in 1827, he changed abruptly from signing himself, ‘your most loving son’, to ‘your most dutiful son’.

 

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