“Her intention was that I should be trained for the ministry, with a view to which I had been sent, after leaving my first school, to Mr. Macintyre, a famous linguist of his day, where I made the acquaintance of Patrick Neill, afterwards the well-known printer, and still better known naturalist, who remained my most intimate friend through life, and of William Blackwood, the no less celebrated publisher.”
Circumstances, however, occurred which entirely changed my father’s prospects and pursuits. Soon after he had attained his fifteenth year his mother was married to Mr. Thomas Smith--son of a shipowner, and member of the Trinity House of Dundee,--who himself was, my father says, a “furnishing iron-merchant, shipowner, and underwriter” in Edinburgh, and who being also a lamp-maker and an ingenious mechanician, appears at a very early date to have directed his attention to the subject of lighthouses, and endeavoured to improve the mode of illumination then in use, by substituting lamps with mirrors, for the open coal-fires which were at that early time the only beacons to guide the mariner.
Mr. Smith’s improvements attracted the notice of Professor Robison, Sir David Hunter Blair, and Mr. Creech, the publisher and honorary secretary to the Chamber of Commerce. I find from the minutes of that body, that in 1786, a complaint was made to them by shipmasters as to the defective state of the coal light on the Isle of May, which was a “private light” belonging to the family of the Duke of Portland.
The Chamber sent a deputation of their number to inquire into the truth of the objections that had been made, who fully confirmed the justice of the complaints.
When the result of the examination was reported to the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Smith submitted to them “a plan for improving the light by dispensing with the coal-fire,” and after fully considering his suggestions, the Chamber, at their meeting of 24th May 1786, resolved “that while they allowed much ingenuity to Mr. Smith’s plan of reflectors, they were of opinion that a coal light should be continued.”
The Board of Northern Lighthouses was constituted by Act of Parliament in 1786; its members were the Lord Advocate and Solicitor-General, the chief magistrates of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, and Campbeltown, and the Sheriffs of the maritime counties of Scotland. These Commissioners, happily for the interests of navigation, took a more enlightened view of their duties than the Chamber of Commerce of Edinburgh, and after hearing and considering Mr. Smith’s proposals, formally appointed him their Engineer.