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The Bell Rock Lighthouse, the Stevensons and Emerging Issues in Aids to Navigation

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The Bell Rock Lighthouse, the Stevensons and Emerging Issues in Aids to Navigation The Bell Rock Lighthouse, the Stevensons and Emerging Issues in Aids to Navigation Conference Friday 4 February 2011 at the Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh in partnership with the Northern Lighthouse Board Supported by Inchcape Shipping Services CONTENTS Acknowledgements .......................................................... 4 Foreword by HRH The Princess Royal ................................. 5 Programme ....................................................................... 6 Speakers’ Papers ............................................................... 8 Biographies ...................................................................... 34 Inchcape Shipping Services ...............................................40 The Northern Lighthouse Board ....................................... 41 The Royal Society of Edinburgh ........................................ 42 The Bell Rock Lighthouse (left) by Ian Cowe – 4 December 2010 The Royal Society of Edinburgh wishes to acknowledge the support of Inchcape Shipping Services and the Northern Lighthouse Board and thank the Organising Committee: Sir Andrew Cubie CBE FRSE, (Chairman) Chairman, Northern Lighthouse Board Catriona Blair Events Officer, The Royal Society of Edinburgh Róisín Calvert-Elliott Business Development and Events Manager, The Royal Society of Edinburgh Professor John R Hume OBE Chairman, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland Bob Kibble Senior Lecturer, School of Education at Edinburgh Roger Lockwood CB Chief Executive, Northern Lighthouse Board Peter Mackay CB Former Commissioner, Northern Lighthouse Board Virginia Mayes-Wright Director, Museum of Scottish Lighthouses Dr Alison Morrison-Low National Museums Scotland Professor Roland Paxton MBE FRSE Honorary Professor, Heriot-Watt University Professor Andrew C Walker FRSE Professor of Modern Optics; Vice-Principal, Heriot-Watt University 4 On 1 February 1811 the Bell Rock Lighthouse, that quite extraordinary feat of Scottish engineering, first displayed its beam of light, warning shipping away from the notorious Inchcape reef and pointing them to the safety of the coastal refuges nearby. Two hundred years later, it is the oldest rock lighthouse in the world in continuous operation and, despite the march towards satellite navigation, the Bell Rock still stands as an essential sentinel in that part of the North Sea. This Conference will mark and celebrate this very important bicentenary. But it will do more than that. While the Bell Rock and its development will be the focus, the Conference will also address the wider, global impact of its builder, Robert Stevenson, and his family; consider the value of the lighthouse, past and present; look through the lens at the science of optics; and look to the future and the era of the satellite. I hope that this Conference will bring to its audience – experts and others – not only an understanding of the lighthouse heritage of which Scotland is so proud and for which it is held in global esteem, but also a broader and deeper understanding of the role of the lighthouse in the 21st Century navigational environment. George Bernard Shaw put it very well: of all the edifices constructed by man, the lighthouse is the most altruistic. It was built purely to serve. 5 CONFERENCE PROGRAMME 9.00 am Registration/tea and coffee 9.30 am RSE Welcome Lord Wilson of Tillyorn KT, GCMG, President, The Royal Society of Edinburgh 9.35 am HRH The Princess Royal 9.40 am The Role of the Northern Lighthouse Board Sir Andrew Cubie CBE FRSE, Chairman, Northern Lighthouse Board Morning Session Theme: The Past: Bell Rock and the Stevensons 9.45 am Introduction and overview The Significance of the Bell Rock Lighthouse Chairman: Dr Richard Dunn, Curator of the History of Navigation, National Maritime Museum, London 9.50 am Session 1: Lighthouses: Before the Bell Rock Dr Alison Morrison-Low, Principal Curator, History of Scientific Instruments and Photography, National Museum Scotland 10.15 am Session 2: The Bell Rock from Ralph the Rover to the 1st Earl of Inchcape Peter Mackay CB, Former Commissioner, NLB 10.35 am Session 3: A Grand Design: Creation of the Bell Rock Lighthouse 1807–1811 Professor Roland Paxton MBE FRSE, Honorary Professor, Heriot-Watt University 11.05 am Question and Answer Session 11.20 am Tea and Coffee 11.50 am Session 4: The Stevensons in New Zealand Helen Beaglehole, Author of Lighting the Coast: A History of New Zealand’s Coastal Lighthouse System 12.20 pm Session 5: The History of Lighthouse Optics Julia Elton, Past-President, Newcomen Society 12.50 pm Session 6: Remembering Lighthouses Virginia Mayes-Wright, Director, Museum of Scottish Lighthouses, Fraserburgh 13.05 pm Question and Answer Session 13.15 pm Lunch 6 Afternoon Session Theme: The Present and the Future: Modern Aids to Navigation 14.15 pm Introduction and Overview The Lighthouse Service Today and in the Future Chairman: Gary Prosser, Secretary General of the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA). 14.20 pm The Northern Lighthouse Board of Today Roger Lockwood CB, Chief Executive, Northern Lighthouse Board 14.30 pm Session 7: Training the Modern Submariner Commander Andrew Bower, Commanding Officer, Submarine Commanding Officers’ Qualifying Course 14.45 pm Session 8: The Science of Lighthouse Optics Professor Andrew C Walker FRSE, Professor of Modern Optics; Deputy Principal, Heriot-Watt Unversity 15.15 pm Question and Answer Session 15.25 pm Tea and Coffee 15.50 pm Session 9: New Stars to Sail By Professor David Last, Former President, Royal Institute of Navigation 16.20 pm Question and Answer Session 16.35 pm Closing remarks Lord Wilson of Tillyorn 16.40 pm CLOSE 7 The Past: Bell Rock and the Stevensons Lighthouses Before the Bell Rock Dr Alison Morrison-Low Principal Curator, History of Scientific Instruments and Photography, National Museum Scotland From antiquity there were lighthouses to be found speculators, who then built structures and gathered around the European coastline, the most famous the light dues at their own expense, but were expected being one of the Seven Wonders: the Pharos of to pay an annual percentage to Trinity House. This Alexandria, known from Pliny’s description and was the situation at the Eddystone when, in 1696, probably dating from the third century BC. There the building of the first rock lighthouse was begun. is an argument that the tower was never lit, being The tower constructed by Henry Winstanley was merely a day-marker of stupendous size to guide swept away in the Great Storm of 1703, and the ships crossing the Mediterranean into the safety renewed structure built by John Rudyerd, after surviving of the harbour; that the tower existed is certain, for almost 50 years, was destroyed by fire in 1755. as bits of masonry are regularly recovered. The Roman Empire emulated this tower’s success along their trade routes in sites around the Mediterranean, and by medieval times there were examples to be found on the Atlantic seaboard. Perhaps the most famous was the French thirteenth-century lighthouse at Corduan, which, much rebuilt, survives today. In England, there were early lights at Dover, on the Isle of Wight and, later, on the dangerous rock named the Eddystone, outside the great natural harbour at Plymouth. Trinity House, the ancient authority governing the building of lighthouses in England, obtained its responsibilities regarding sea-marks under an Elizabethan Statute. This enabled it to run lighthouse construction as a monopoly, leasing it out to private John Smeaton rebuilt the Eddystone lighthouse after studying such plans and models left by his predecessors, coming to the conclusion that the only material to withstand the raging elements was stone: he built carefully into the rock, forming layers of masonry that keyed into those above and below, while each course formed an interlocking layer. He studied the chemistry of cement; he thought about the shape of the structure, drawing inspiration from the shape of oak trees; and he persuaded his clients to back his radical new design. In later life, he was persuaded to write his Narrative of the Building … of the Edystone Light-house with Stone ... (London, 1791). In it, he gave a day-by-day detailed chronicle of its construction, trying to answer all the questions an inquisitive public had pestered him with since his lighthouse was lit in October 1759. 8 Meanwhile, in Scotland, where the coastline is longer lights, and those in England that seemed in the and much more hazardous, harbour beacons are forefront of technological advance. Thomas Smith, known to have been established at Leith (1553) and a tin–smith who had obtained the contract for Aberdeen (1566). Most trade was carried out from lighting Edinburgh with oil-lamps, was appointed the east coast royal burghs, and although Engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board. Smith comparatively safe for mariners, seaborne traffic built and lit the first four Scottish lighthouses – had to negotiate the hazards of the notorious Kinnaird Head (1786), Mull of Kintyre (1787), Inchcape Reef, the rocks and islands of the river North Ronaldsay (1789) and Eilean Glas (1789). Forth, and the shifting sandbanks of the Tay estuary. Thomas Smith’s reflector was a modified paraffin The first lighthouse was established in the Forth on lamp with pieces of mirror placed behind the light the summit of the Isle of May in 1636, using a source. This was used as the illumination of his first coal-burning beacon set on a two-storey tower. At four lighthouses, and then, as the Northern the mouth of the Tay, a pair of ‘leading lights’ were Lighthouse Board extended their initial remit, to set up on the north shore in 1687, which, when Pladda (1790), and Pentland Skerries (1794). lined up by an approaching ship’s pilot, would guide the vessel safely past the sandbanks there. After 1801, Smith and his step-son Robert Stevenson (1772–1850) began to make and install Argand By this time the volume of seaborne traffic was lamps and silvered-copper reflectors, starting at growing along the west coast, and a lighthouse was Inchkeith, an island in the Forth, in 1804.
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