and cultivate their food, and they regarded Thomas and his mirror-lamps as a mortal threat not just to their livelihood but to their lives.
More awkwardly, the wreckers could, with some justification, claim salvage from a ship as a legal right. Until 1852 and the Customs Consolidation Act which appointed official Receivers of Wreck, the law remained confused and uneasy, and little could be done to prevent thefts. Previously, all wrecks in British waters came under the jurisdiction of the Lord Admiral whose role was to take ‘cognisance of the death of man, and mayhem done in great ships’, and who delegated responsibility to lord lieutenants in each county. All cargo was divided into four categories: flotsam – cargo that floated; jetsam – jettisoned cargo abandoned by the crew in their attempts to save the ship; ligan – cargo that sank and was marked with a buoy for later retrieval, and wreck – the cargo that was washed ashore. For many years, all four types became the subject of an undignified wrestle between the finder, the landowner, and the Crown. If the rightful owner did not claim his cargo within a year and a day, it was forfeit to the Crown, although the finder was entitled to a reward proportionate to the value of the goods.
Landowners could claim the ‘privilege of right’ to anything washed up on their foreshores. Their tenants then adapted that privilege to suit themselves. Wreckers took advantage of the silences in legislation to justify their lootings either under civil law, or under a shrewd interpretation of divine justice. Eventually, the impasse developed into a very British truce, part opportunism, part Queensberry Rules, and part amateur criminality. With the increase in customs and smuggling patrols during the early nineteenth century, wreckers realised that their safest chance lay in staying within the law; if they came across a stricken ship, they must rescue the crew first, but, having done so, the ship became theirs to plunder or sell as they pleased. The practice still exists to this day; any ship (other than those of the coastguard or RNLI) that assists another ship in distress is entitled to claim a portion of the value of that ship in return for saving the lives of the crew. Given that a captain therefore risks forfeiting his ship, this also gives rise to the reluctance of many crews to issue Mayday calls, even in extremis.
The early wreckers also brought a certain grim ingenuity to their tasks. Many locals in areas in which ships were regularly wrecked did not just wait for disaster; they created it. Luring ships onto the rocks was a particular favourite. The Scilly Isles, the West Country and the Hebrides were all rumoured to have wreckers who put up false lights to guide the mariner onto the rocks. It was easy enough to light a bonfire on a dangerous coastline, or tie a lantern to a horse’s tail so it imitated the swinging of a ship’s light. For a while, the first lighthouses only made the situation worse. The local wreckers, aware that ships relied on the towers to know their position near land, set up rival lights nearby in order to beguile the pilots away from their true course and onto the nearby coast. There were other methods as well. The Wolf Rock, eight miles south-west of Land’s End, was a notorious hazard for shipping, and was regarded by the local Cornish wreckers as an excellent source of plunder. Within the rock, however, there was a cavern hollowed out over centuries by the movement of the tides. When the waves crashed through it, trapping and then releasing the air within, the cavern made a sound eerily similar to a wolf’s howl. The wreckers, worried that the lonely baying of the rock would alert ships to the Wolf’s existence, stopped up the cavern with stones to silence it.
Unfortunately, the Scots were no kinder. Compton Mackenzie’s amiable fable of the SS Politician in Whisky Galore was based on a less amiable truth; the Highlanders and Islanders of Scotland were enthusiastic wreckers. Legends and rumours seeded themselves with suspicious frequency; the local minister on the Isle of Sanday was reputed to pray devotedly every Sunday for those in peril on the sea, to ask God politely if he intended to sink any ships soon and, if so, whether He couldn’t organise it so they were wrecked on Sanday. When Robert Stevenson started work on the island in 1806, he noted that wrecks were so frequent in the area that the islanders fenced their fields with ship-timbers instead of stone. Wrecking also produced another curious inequality; rents on the sides of the island that produced most wrecks were higher than on the more hospitable side. Living in a wreck zone had kept the northerners rich, and the southerners poor. Robert was also astonished to discover ‘a park paled round, chiefly with cedar wood and mahogany from the wreck of a Honduras built ship; and in one island, after the wreck of a ship laden with wine, the inhabitants have been known to take claret to their barley meal porridge, instead of their usual beverage.’ Thomas – and Robert in his turn – had a hard task in selling their lights to the islanders before they had even begun to build them.
But for all the predictable and unpredictable human difficulties, Smith’s early efforts with the Scottish lighthouses provided a useful guide for all his professional successors. He was, after all, not a trained engineer in the modern sense, but an imaginative man who did his best with the materials available. The Commissioners had only a vague idea of what the work would entail, and expected Smith to complete most of the supervision on his own and unpaid. For almost ten years, Thomas took no salary at all from the NLB (who were, in any case, broke) and relied entirely on his income from the Edinburgh work. There was some method in his madness.
Thomas worked for the Commissioners because he believed implicitly in the need for guidance at sea, not because he thought it might profit him. He had been reared with a strong notion of public duty, and was quite prepared, despite the lack of money and the spartan conditions, to live up to his promises. Despite the improvised nature of the work, his reports show a good-natured stoicism for the endless hardships he put up with. He noted everything, from the supply of window putty to the problems the keepers had with grazing for their cows. Where routine could be imposed, Thomas tried; he wrote reports, revised instructions, built relationships and imposed discipline. Once it became evident that lighthouse work would demand an ever-increasing amount of time and attention, Thomas resigned himself to regular annual voyages around the coast inspecting existing lights and assessing the necessity for new ones. The voyages were usually hard and often frustrating; Thomas settled into a familiar pattern of remaining storm-stayed in port or being delayed by the unwelcome attention of press gangs.
When back in Edinburgh, Thomas spent much of his time planning improvements to the lights. There were also the demands of Edinburgh society; Thomas, as entrepreneur and public servant, slid happily into the comforts of the New Town bourgeoisie. He trusted implicitly in the Edinburgh virtues of thrift, hard work, humanity and humbug. In middle age, he grew a little stout, but never idle. He worked hard for his business, looked after his family, and took to holding dinner parties. His make-do background had some influence on his later character; once the business was healthy enough, he became the most conservative of men, joined the Edinburgh Spearmen (a volunteer regiment ostensibly called up to fight the revolutionary French but actually dedicated to suppressing domestic riots) and became a captain. The discipline of his public life coincided nicely with his professional existence. He did well from the New Town, which provided an almost inexhaustible demand for brassware, grates and fittings of all kinds, and fitted into the new middle-class world of salons and afternoon teas with ease.
Thomas had been able both to exploit the new, hubristic mood of the city, and to appropriate many of its values. And, having earned his place in society, he was a contented man. He had overcome great insecurity to establish himself in a role which demanded exceptional effort, but rewarded him with both position and respect. His marriage to Jean Lillie had given him a warm and stable family life, and the lighthouses provided the means to keep it. By 1803, he had been confident enough to buy himself a patch of land in Baxter’s Place in the lee of Calton Hill, and to build on it a grand new family house in delightfully fashionable style. It was large enough, indeed, to allow both for a warehouse in which he could experiment with designs, and for a separate flat in which the older children would later be installed. Inside its newfangled elegances, the Smith and Stevenson children lived in disciplined harmony, apparently quite content with the splicing together of the two families. And, it was rapidly becoming evident, his marriage had also gained him an apprentice who seemed to have every intention of continuing his connection with the Northern Lights.
By the age of sixteen, Robert Stevenson had
