This description may seem particular; but the reason will appear obvious, when it is recollected, that the landing of the materials has been considered one of the most nice and difficult parts of seamanship, and on which the best informed seamen were unable to say how it might answer, without great risk to the crew, and damage to the stones, and even occasionally losing them between the ship and the praam-boat. Both vessels being afloat, and riding in the open sea, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile from the Bell Rock, their motion was instantly communicated to the landing-gaff, and so to the stone in the tackle. The six blocks of granite having been placed upon the praam’s deck, she was towed to a floating-buoy, where she was made fast, until the proper time of tide, for taking her into one of the creeks of the rock.
[Sidenote: Stones first landed on the Rock.]
At a quarter past 4 P. M., the boats, with the artificers, left the floating-light, and the work of the evening tide commenced at a quarter before 5. The sailors having previously decorated the ships and the praam-boat with flags, she was towed to the rock by two boats. The writer having resolved personally to attend the whole progress of this experiment went on board of the praam-boat, when she entered the eastern creek, where the foreman builder, at the head of the artificers, gave three hearty cheers. As the praam had not water to float her so far up the creek as the site of the building, her cargo was delivered upon Smith’s Ledge, on the north side of this creek, as marked on Plate VI. In the present unprepared state of the machinery and implements upon the rock, the stones, in the present case, were raised with pinches, and pushed ashore upon planks. The whole of this experiment succeeded to the writer’s utmost expectation, who was thus led to conclude, that the materials might be landed with much more expedition and certainty than he had previously supposed. All hands spontaneously collected to witness the landing of the first stone, which had no sooner touched the rock, than other three cheers were given, and, on this occasion, a glass of rum was served out by the steward. Having continued two hours upon the rock this evening, the artificers left it at 7, and returned to the floating-light, while the landing-master’s crew towed the praam-boat off to the Smeaton, that she might be taken to Arbroath, having completed all that was intended with her, this season.