STEVENSON, Robert.

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...Drawn up by desire of the Commissioners of the Northern Light-Houses.

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Twenty-three engraved plates (mostly double-page or folding), including a frontispiece drawn by J.M.W. Turner. xix, 533, [2] pp. Large thick 4to, later 19th-cent. morocco (joints carefully repaired, foot of spine a little chipped), sides panelled in gilt, spine gilt, entirely uncut. Edinburgh: A. Constable, 1824. First edition and a fine copy of this handsomely illustrated account of the construction of the Bell Rock lighthouse. In the last years of the 18th century, Stevenson was named engineer to the Scottish lighthouse board. “He inaugurated the Scottish lighthouse system, which is still conducted on the lines he initiated. Under his superintendence no fewer than twenty lighthouses were designed and constructed, and many improvements, now in universal use, were due to his ingenuity. He brought the catoptric or reflecting system of lighting to perfection, advocated the adoption of the dioptric or refracting system with its central lamp, and invented the intermittent and flashing lights...The most important of his lighthouses was the famous Bell Rock tower, erected on a dangerous reef submerged by every tide to the depth of twelve feet, and lying in the fairway of ships making for the estuaries of the Tay and Forth. Previous attempts made by Captain Brodie to erect beacons upon it had failed. In the storm of 1799 seventy sail were wrecked off the reef, among them the York, 74-gun ship. After a careful survey Stevenson designed and modelled a tower, and reported on 28 Dec. 1800 to his board that the erection of a stone tower on the reef was practicable... “After five years of arduous labour the lighthouse was in working order...The tower, which, as in all Stevenson’s lighthouses, is free from architectural adornment, rises to the height of 100 ft. ; the diameter at the base is 42 ft., diminishing to 16 ft. at the top. Above the solid, which is 80 ft. in height, is the entrance doorway, the interior being divided into six stories. Smeaton in his Eddystone tower adopted an arched form of floor, rendering it necessary to insert chains embedded in the masonry to counteract the outward thrust ; but in the Bell Rock tower, by an ingenious arrangement of the masonry, the stone floors were converted into effective ‘bonds,’ thus tying the walls together, for as the stone floors form part of the walls, outward thrust is prevented. All subsequent rock towers have this form of floor. The cubic contents of the tower are more than double those of the Eddystone, from which it differs in many respects owing to its far more difficult and dangerous site...The optical apparatus consisted of parabolic reflectors of silvered copper, combined with argand burners, arranged on a four-sided frame, the best and most complete apparatus then known...Since the lighting of the Bell Rock not a single wreck has taken place on the reef... “Not only was the tower itself novel in design, but the implements used in its erection had to be invented. The balance and movable jib cranes were for the first time used at the Bell Rock. The latter is now in universal use. Ball-bearing were also introduced into the cranes at the Bell Rock for the first time. Stevenson further designed for the temporary lightship moored off the Bell Rock tower during its construction — the first lightship placed in so deep water — a lantern to surround the mast, instead of small lanterns hung from the yard-arms or frames. This improvement is now universally adopted.”–D.N.B., XVIII, pp. 1130-31. The frontispiece illustration of the lighthouse during a storm is drawn by J.M.W. Turner. A handsome copy. Ex Bibliotheca Mechanica.

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