IV — OPERATIONS OF 1810

Hav­ing land­ed at sev­en, and found every­thing in an order­ly state, the land­ing-mas­ter’s crew again com­menced the work of get­ting the cast iron rails of the stair into the house, sev­er­al of which, being upwards of 400 pounds weight, required con­sid­er­able tack­le for lift­ing them out of the hold of the ship and into their places, which was done by fix­ing a pair of shears or a tri­an­gle of spar upon the sol­id rock.

This piece of work, the rails being all of dif­fer­ent fig­ures and num­bers, was found to be more intri­cate, and to require more labour and man­age­ment than had been antic­i­pat­ed, as the dif­fer­ent pieces could not be dis­tin­guished with­out being mea­sured and accu­rate­ly fit­ted to their respec­tive places.

On a sub­se­quent vis­it on the 5th of Decem­ber, a storm caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age. The bea­con-house, although shak­en by the tem­pest and its low­er parts filled with water and rub­ble, stood firm­ly. The pow­er­ful seas had, how­ev­er, swept away sev­er­al of the tem­po­rary fix­tures of the light­house, includ­ing a small tem­po­rary wood­en rail around the bal­cony, storm shut­ters, and even one of the prin­ci­pal beams sup­port­ing the tem­po­rary rail or fence. This event high­light­ed the absolute neces­si­ty of the per­ma­nent iron rail­ings planned for the bal­cony.

Cap­tain Wil­son, the land­ing mas­ter, laid up with a severe cold, left the rock after land­ing the essen­tial pro­vi­sions. The rest of the crew, includ­ing Mr. John Reid, the prin­ci­pal light­keep­er, worked dili­gent­ly to secure the light­house and bea­con against future storms. The ongo­ing efforts includ­ed the instal­la­tion of the light room’s remain­ing fix­tures and the per­ma­nent rail­ings around the bal­cony. These prepa­ra­tions were cru­cial for the upcom­ing win­ter, when work­ing con­di­tions would become even more chal­leng­ing.

Through­out these efforts, the resilience and inge­nu­ity of the con­struc­tion crew, as well as the metic­u­lous plan­ning and super­vi­sion of the
engi­neer­ing and lead­er­ship teams, were evi­dent. Their ded­i­ca­tion ensured the light­house would not only serve as a vital nav­i­ga­tion­al aid but also stand as a tes­ta­ment to human per­se­ver­ance in the face of nature’s mag­nif­i­cent fury.