“Previous to this dreadful storm I had prepared my pillar-formed model, a section of which is shown in Plate VII. of the ‘Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.’ Early in the year 1800, I, for the first time, landed on the rock to see the application of my pillar-formed model to the situation for which it was designed and made.
“On this occasion I was accompanied by my friend Mr. James Haldane, architect, whose pupil I had been for architectural drawing. Our landing was at low water of a spring-tide, when a good _space_ of rock was above water, and then the realities of its danger were amply exemplified by the numerous relics which were found in its crevices, such as a ship’s marking-iron, a piece of a kedge-anchor, and a cabin stove, a bayonet, cannon-ball, silver shoe-buckle, crowbars, pieces of money, and other evidences of recent shipwreck.
“I had no sooner set foot upon the rock than I laid aside all idea of a pillar-formed structure, fully convinced that a building on similar principles with the Eddystone would be found practicable.
“On my return from this visit to the rock, I immediately set to work in good earnest, with a design of a stone lighthouse, and modelled it. I accompanied this design with a report or memorial to the Lighthouse Board. The abandoned pillar-formed plan I estimated at £15,000, and the stone building at £42,685, 8s. But still I found that I had not made much impression on the Board on the score of expense, for they feared it would cost much more than forty or fifty thousand pounds.”
It was as to some of the details of this stone design that my father asked Professor Playfair to give his opinion, and received the following reply, which was not a little encouraging to the young engineer attempting to improve on the design of the great Smeaton:--
“Mr. Playfair is very sorry that he has scarce had any time to look more particularly over the plans which Mr. Stevenson has been so good as to send him. Mr. Playfair is too little acquainted with practical mechanics to make his opinion of much weight on such a subject as the construction of a lighthouse. But so far as he can presume to judge, the method of connecting the stones proposed by Mr. Stevenson is likely to prove perfectly secure, and has the advantage of being more easily constructed than Mr. Smeaton’s.”