had to be carried over twelve miles of stark moorland to the site. Every slate, every block of stone, every fragment of lens and gallon of fuel, had to be taken on horseback and even then the journey was considered so difficult that only one trip could be made each day. Moreover, many of the materials for the lighthouses were new and untried. It was difficult for instance to manufacture glass large and strong enough for the storm-stressed lanterns, since reinforced glass had not yet been invented and metal supports would only have obscured the light.
Many of Thomas’s experiments worked well in his Edinburgh workshop, but when transported out to the edges of Scotland were found to be impractical or unusable. Where possible, he used local building materials, with the trusted Scottish combination of granite, slate and wood as the basis of the buildings. The delicate mirrored reflectors, however, had to be transported from his Bristo Street workshop by sea to the site, and were sometimes found to be ill-fitted for their purpose. The numbers of reflectors in each light had to be varied, and each one brought its own difficulties of transportation and installation. For a long while the task of constructing the lights seemed so impossible that Thomas had considerable difficulty persuading the incredulous local builders to work for him.
Appointing the first lighthouse keepers also presented unexpected difficulties. In the early years, Thomas looked mainly for retired shipmasters and mariners, either hired locally or brought to him by word of mouth. They too had to be pioneers of a kind; much of their role could only be resolved through experience, and a precise definition of their duties only emerged over time. But they were also responsible for a great deal of delicate and expensive equipment, and Thomas left little to chance. James Park, the first keeper at Kinnaird Head, was instructed to
clean the Reflectors and the panes in the windows every day the proper manner of cleaning the Reflectors is to take off any Oil or Smoke that may be found upon them with soft tow and then rub them with a soft linnen rag and Spanish white or finely pounded Chalk till they are perfectly bright this must be strictly attended to or else a great part of the effect of the lights will be lost…You will light the lamps half an hour after Sun-seting and keep them burning till half an hour before Sunrising every day for which purpose you must attend them every two or three hours throughout the night to help any of the lights that may be turning dim but you must take care not to stand before the lights any longer than is necessary of that purpose and you are to observe that in stormy weather you must not leave the light room the whole night.
In return, Park was given a shilling per night, free lodging, and pasturage for a cow. He remained contentedly in the job for a decade, before retiring aged almost eighty.
There were also some staffing difficulties Thomas could not have foreseen. At North Ronaldsay, the keeper took good relations with his neighbours too far, and had started his own local black market in lighthouse fuel. ‘The keeper,’ Smith wrote indignantly in his report to the NLB, ‘has acted the most dishonest and infamous part that can be imagined. He has by his own confessions before a number of witnesses sold the oil sent him in very great quantities throughout North Ronaldsay and the neighbouring island of Sanday, so that his conduct is notorious in the whole country.’ Smith rapidly discovered that, despite all his efforts, the keepers themselves kept introducing an unwelcome dose of chaos.
Perhaps most striking of all was his pained discovery that not everyone wanted or encouraged the lighthouses. Thomas and his Stevenson successors found that they did not merely have to compete with primitive materials and impossible geography, they also found themselves at war with inertia, hostility, superstition and disbelief. They had to do battle with landowners and government to get the lights built, and they found themselves challenging the prejudices of those whom those lights were supposed to save. Many people did not believe that lighthouses would work; many believed they were too expensive, many saw them as a form of religious defiance. Many people simply did not see the need for them. During the original inquiry into the need for a light on the Isle of May back in 1635, all the predictable excuses had arisen: the light would be too weak to be seen, the shipowners would be financially broken by the charges, there was no need for a light, the rock itself was not dangerous.
There were also more imaginative protestations. John Cowtrey, a skipper from Largs, complained that a light on the Isle of May would only guide ships to destruction on the nearby Inchcape and Carr rocks. George Scot, another skipper from Dysart, complained that since the light would not be visible in a snowstorm, there was no point in having one. Richard Ross, a merchant in Bruntisland, thought that boats would always be wrecked on the isle, and that a light would make no difference. James Lochoir, a skipper from Kinghorn, believed that ships which ran aground on the isle were stupid, and no light on earth would save them from their own imbecility. Exactly the same crop of complaints arose with subsequent lights; even when the benefits were there for all to see, there were plenty of souls who resolutely refused to acknowledge their usefulness.
Down in England, the protests were even more elaborate. Curiously, many of those complaints came from the lighthouse service itself. Like the NLB, Trinity House was impoverished for much of its early existence, since the Crown had originally given it the authority to build lights, but not to charge for them. It therefore spent much of its life finding ingenious new ways to wriggle out of its duties. During the seventeenth-century debate over the construction of the lights at North and South Foreland near Dover, Trinity House objected on the grounds that lights would only alert foreign ships to the British coast. They complained bitterly of ‘such costly follies as lighthouses…The Goodwins [the notorious Goodwin Sands] are no more dangerous now than time out of mind they were, and lighthouses would never lull tempests, the real cause of shipwreck.’ And, as they concluded with a final, divine flourish of illogic, ‘If lighthouses had been of any service at the Forelands the Trinity House as guardians of the interests of the shipping would have put them there.’
The most serious threat to the lighthouses, and one which was to bother both Thomas and Robert for far longer, were the wreckers. They, unlike the shipowners, the skippers or even Trinity House, had a vested interest in ensuring that ships were destroyed. Many coastal villages staked their livelihoods on the exotic plunder to be found in dead and dying ships; the wreckers saw their lootings as a perk of nautical life and bitterly resented any attempts to interfere. As Thomas discovered, the wreckers were furious at the prospect of a safer sea.
The increase in shipping, and the consequent increase in shipwrecks, meant that by the late eighteenth century, they were thriving on salvage and theft. Wrecks were so frequent that many coastal populations had come to regard the cargo as their right. Sailors who survived gales and destruction were often murdered by locals within sight of the shore, and certain areas of the country became notorious for wreckers’ exploits. In the south, it was claimed by one early historian that
If a wreck happened to occur in Cornwall while Divine Service was being held, notice of it was given out from the pulpit by the parson. It is said of the wreckers, I know not with what truth, that the strongest among them would swim out through the breakers and drown the exhausted survivors by thrusting them under water as the poor wretches struggled, with failing strength, to reach the shore. There were even pious fanatics who went so far as to admonish the people that it was sinful to succour a vessel in distress upon the Sabbath; that it was, in fact, sinful to save life. On the other hand, refusal to do so was a proof of true religiousness since it showed that they realised it was God’s will that the ship should sink and the crew perish.
Some shipwreck survivors would be saved by a stray compassionate soul; more often they were regarded as a dangerous inconvenience and left to die. The wreckers worked furtively, away from the censorship of officialdom, and did what they could to prevent the local customs officers from becoming too curious. In many cases, those officials were either easily corruptible or practised at turning a blind eye. Their leniency was perhaps understandable, since in many areas of Britain the population desperately needed the sea’s harvest. The Hebrides in particular included islands naked of a single tree, and their islanders were forced to import even the most basic materials for life. They thus relied heavily on driftwood and wreck to build their
