Dubh Artach (; ) is a remote
skerry
A skerry is a small rocky island, or islet, usually too small for human habitation. It may simply be a rocky reef. A skerry can also be called a low sea stack.
A skerry may have vegetative life such as moss and small, hardy grasses. They a ...
of
basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...
rock off the west coast of
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
lying west of
Colonsay and south-west of the
Ross of Mull
The Ross of Mull (Scottish Gaelic: ''An Ros Mhuileach'') is the largest peninsula of the Isle of Mull, about long, and makes up the south-western part of the island. It is bounded to the north by Loch Scridain and to the south by the Firth of L ...
.
A
lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways.
Lighthouses mar ...
designed by
Thomas Stevenson
Thomas Stevenson PRSE MInstCE FRSSA FSAScot (22 July 1818 – 8 May 1887) was a pioneering Scottish civil engineer, lighthouse designer and meteorologist, who designed over thirty lighthouses in and around Scotland, as well as the Stevenson sc ...
with a tower height of was erected between 1867 and 1872 with a shore station constructed on the isle of
Erraid
Erraid ( gd, Eilean Earraid) is a tidal island approximately square located in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It lies west of Mull (to which it is linked by a beach at low tide) and southeast of Iona. The island receives about of rainWalker, A ...
. The rock is subject to extraordinary sea conditions with waves of or more being encountered by the keepers. Despite these adverse conditions several men served the light for lengthy periods until it was automated in 1971. ''Dubh Artach'' is the official name of the lighthouse, although the skerry itself is also known as Dhu Heartach. Various interpretations have been provided for the original meaning of the Gaelic name, of which "The Black Rock" is the most likely.
Geology
In pre-historic times Dhu Heartach was covered by the ice sheets that spread from Scotland out into the Atlantic Ocean beyond the
Outer Hebrides
The Outer Hebrides () or Western Isles ( gd, Na h-Eileanan Siar or or ("islands of the strangers"); sco, Waster Isles), sometimes known as the Long Isle/Long Island ( gd, An t-Eilean Fada, links=no), is an island chain off the west coast ...
. After the last retreat of the ice around 20,000 years ago, sea levels were up to lower than at present. Although the
isostatic rise of land makes estimating post-glacial coastlines a complex task, circa 14,000
BP it is likely that Dubh Heartach was at the western edge of a large land bridge linking what is now the island of Ireland to Scotland. This land mass included the islands of
Jura and
Islay
Islay ( ; gd, Ìle, sco, Ila) is the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Known as "The Queen of the Hebrides", it lies in Argyll just south west of Jura, Scotland, Jura and around north of the Northern Irish coast. The isl ...
and was probably connected to the mainland of Scotland by an
isthmus near Loch Craignish, south of
Oban
Oban ( ; ' in Scottish Gaelic meaning ''The Little Bay'') is a resort town within the Argyll and Bute council area of Scotland. Despite its small size, it is the largest town between Helensburgh and Fort William. During the tourist season, th ...
.
[Murray (1973) pp. 67–69.]
Steadily rising sea levels would then have slowly isolated and finally all but submerged Dhu Heartach, which today is a rounded, dark green mass of
basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...
ic rock called
augite
Augite is a common rock-forming pyroxene mineral with formula . The crystals are monoclinic and prismatic. Augite has two prominent cleavages, meeting at angles near 90 degrees.
Characteristics
Augite is a solid solution in the pyroxene group. ...
, which is long and wide, and which rises to above sea level.
[Nicholson (1995) pp. 146-57.] Submarine surveys indicate that the rock is at the eastern end of a valley stretching into the Atlantic, which may "account for the seemingly abnormal seas to which the tower is subjected". It is an isolated outpost of the
Inner Hebrides
The Inner Hebrides (; Scottish Gaelic: ''Na h-Eileanan a-staigh'', "the inner isles") is an archipelago off the west coast of mainland Scotland, to the south east of the Outer Hebrides. Together these two island chains form the Hebrides, whic ...
archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands.
Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archi ...
. The author
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
wrote:
An ugly reef is this of the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore
Skerryvore (from the Gaelic ''An Sgeir Mhòr'' meaning "The Great Skerry") is a remote island that lies off the west coast of Scotland, southwest of Tiree. Skerryvore Lighthouse is located on these rocks, built with some difficulty between 18 ...
, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there but of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a mill-race, and growled about the outer reef for ever, and ever and again, in the calmest weather, roared and spouted on the rock itself.[Stevenson (1887) p. 83.]
Meaning of the name
The translation of ''Dubh Artach'' is "The Black Rock", ''artach'' being a now obsolete Gaelic word for a rock or rocky ground both in
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
and in
Irish. The variation between the anglicised forms ''Dubh Artach'' and ''Dhu Heartach'' is a simple case of
false splitting
Rebracketing (also known as resegmentation or metanalysis) is a process in historical linguistics where a word originally derived from one set of morphemes is broken down or bracketed into a different set. For example, ''hamburger'', originally ...
where the final
of
̪uh arˠʃt̪əxin pronunciation seemingly is part of the following word, suggesting ''
*hartach'' or ''heartach'' to the untrained ear.
Stevenson believed that 'black and dismal' was a translation of the name, noting that "as usual, in Gaelic, it is not the only one."
Adamnan in his 7th-century ''Life of St Columba'' poetically calls the rock ''An Dubh Iar-stac'', "The Black Stack of the West".
["Dubh Artach Lighthouse "]
Northern Lighthouse Board. Retrieved 7 September 2008. Watson (1926) suggests the root is
Old Irish
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...
''hirt'' meaning "death", (which he also believes occurs in
Hirta
Hirta ( gd, Hiort) is the largest island in the St Kilda archipelago, on the western edge of Scotland. The names (in Scottish Gaelic) and ''Hirta'' (historically in English) have also been applied to the entire archipelago. Now without a perman ...
, the main island of the
St Kilda archipelago), and offers ''am Duibh-hirteach'', meaning "the black deadly one". The skerry was also known as ''St. John's Rock'' prior to the construction of the lighthouse.
Planning and construction of the lighthouse
![Dubh artach](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Dubh_artach.jpg)
Between 1800 and 1854 thirty ships were wrecked on the reef;
[Bathhurst (2000) pp. 210–35.] however, the requirement for a lighthouse was not only to warn seafarers away from Dhu Heartach itself, but also to guide them past the fearsome
Torran Rocks
The Torran Rocks are a group of small islands and skerries located between the islands of Mull and Colonsay in Scotland.
Geography and geology
The main rocks are Dearg Sgeir, MacPhail's Anvil, Na Torrain, Torran Sgoilte and Torr an t-Saothaid ...
, which lie between the Ross of Mull and
Colonsay. Originally it was considered to be an impossible site for a light, but the loss of the steamer ''Bussorah'' with all thirty-three hands on her maiden voyage in 1863 and of an astonishing 24 vessels in the area in a storm on 30–31 December 1865 encouraged positive action under pressure from insurers
Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's of London, generally known simply as Lloyd's, is an insurance and reinsurance market located in London, England. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; rather, Lloyd's is a corporate body gov ...
and a Captain Bedford of the Admiralty.
[ The engineering work was supervised by the famous Stevenson family of engineers, the brothers ]Thomas
Thomas may refer to:
People
* List of people with given name Thomas
* Thomas (name)
* Thomas (surname)
* Saint Thomas (disambiguation)
* Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church
* Thomas the Ap ...
(father of Robert Louis) and David
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
commencing work in 1866.[ Thomas noted that "it would be a work of no ordinary magnitude".][
]
The land base for the construction of the light was Erraid
Erraid ( gd, Eilean Earraid) is a tidal island approximately square located in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It lies west of Mull (to which it is linked by a beach at low tide) and southeast of Iona. The island receives about of rainWalker, A ...
near Iona
Iona (; gd, Ì Chaluim Chille (IPA: iːˈxaɫ̪ɯimˈçiʎə, sometimes simply ''Ì''; sco, Iona) is a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the Ross of Mull on the western coast of Scotland. It is mainly known for Iona Abbey, though there ...
. Fourteen miles distant from Dhu Heartach across open sea, the little island provided a granite quarry and a shore station once the work on the lighthouse was completed. Initial construction on the rock, which began on 25 June 1867 under the supervision of Alan Brebner
Alan Brebner MInstCE () was a Scottish civil engineer, primarily associated with the Stevenson family who designed and built the majority of lighthouses in and around Scotland over several generations.
Early life
Brebner was born in Edinburg ...
, required a barrack for the workmen made of iron. Summer gales brought high seas, which resulted in breaking water falling on the roof above sea level. It held firm, although fourteen men including Brebner were trapped there for five days, and at one point seawater poured in through the trapdoor, swirled around them and exited with their remaining food supplies.[ Describing a similar occasion, R. L. Stevenson wrote:
Despite these hardships a foundation pit was excavated and by 1869 a solid portion of tower rising above foundation level had been completed. This was no mean feat. On one occasion eleven two-ton stones were dislodged from the third course of stonework and carried off the rock, never to be seen again.][ Robert Stevenson noted that this destruction occurred at the same height "above the sea ''as the glass panes in the lantern of Smeaton's lighthouse''" at Eddystone.
]
The solid base weighing 1,840 tons rises more than above the pounding seas, more than twice as high as its nearest British rival of Skerryvore
Skerryvore (from the Gaelic ''An Sgeir Mhòr'' meaning "The Great Skerry") is a remote island that lies off the west coast of Scotland, southwest of Tiree. Skerryvore Lighthouse is located on these rocks, built with some difficulty between 18 ...
. The blocks, having been shaped and fitted on Erraid, were towed out to the rock in barges by the steamer ‘Dhuheartach’ each barge carrying 16 tons. Masonry work was completed in 1871 and the lantern, optical apparatus and fog bell installed the following year, Dubh Artach becoming the first isolated rock light in Britain to use paraffin Paraffin may refer to:
Substances
* Paraffin wax, a white or colorless soft solid that is used as a lubricant and for other applications
* Liquid paraffin (drug), a very highly refined mineral oil used in cosmetics and for medical purposes
* Alkane ...
. The finished tower rises above the foundation in seventy-seven courses of stonework all told.[
The total cost of the works undertaken by the ]Northern Lighthouse Board
The Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) is the general lighthouse authority for Scotland and the Isle of Man. It is a non-departmental public body responsible for marine navigation aids around coastal areas.
History
The NLB was formed by Act of P ...
was £65,784, excluding the £10,300 cost of establishing the shore station on Erraid. However, the extraordinary nature of the work should not be reduced to mere numbers. Stevenson was moved to note that:
Early operations
Completion of the construction work did not result in an end to the hazards. At low tide the landing stage is forty feet above a boat, yet not completely out of the reach of the swell. Landings other than via the precarious use of dangling ropes from a derrick were most unusual even on calm days.[ The storm seas could rise to extraordinary heights. In the first year of operation, the copper lightning conductor was wrenched out of its sockets by a storm at a height of above high water.][
The first principal keeper was James Ewing who looked after the light for the next eleven years. Despite the exceptionally adverse conditions faced by the keepers, which resulted in them receiving additional payments in kind, Ewing was not the only one who served the light for a decade or more.][ However, some found the lonely rock and its cramped quarters less to their taste. One had to be prevented from diving into the sea and attempting to swim ashore.][
]
Later events
* In 1874 the principal keeper reported an incident which suggested that the rock had experienced an earth tremor
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
but the tower stood fast.[
* Robert Louis Stevenson's connection with the construction of Dubh Artach and its shore station played a significant part in his 1886 novel '']Kidnapped
Kidnapped may refer to:
* subject to the crime of kidnapping
Literature
* ''Kidnapped'' (novel), an 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson
* ''Kidnapped'' (comics), a 2007 graphic novel adaptation of R. L. Stevenson's novel by Alan Grant and Ca ...
'' during which the main character, David Balfour, experiences the dangers of the Torran Rocks and is marooned on Erraid
Erraid ( gd, Eilean Earraid) is a tidal island approximately square located in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It lies west of Mull (to which it is linked by a beach at low tide) and southeast of Iona. The island receives about of rainWalker, A ...
.
* In 1890 a distinctive red band was painted round the middle section of the tower to distinguish it from Skerryvore
Skerryvore (from the Gaelic ''An Sgeir Mhòr'' meaning "The Great Skerry") is a remote island that lies off the west coast of Scotland, southwest of Tiree. Skerryvore Lighthouse is located on these rocks, built with some difficulty between 18 ...
, to the northwest, which was served from the same shore station.[
* A dispute concerning the financing of lighthouses led to an 1898 visit to Dubh Artach of some prominent persons, including the President of the ]Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for International Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer
The chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom, and head of His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the Chancellor is ...
, Sir Michael Hicks Beach.
* The name of the lighthouse was changed in 1964 from ''Dhuheartach'' to the present form ''Dubh Artach''. The reasons for this are not clear, although the latter is arguably easier to spell for anglophones
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...
.[
* The lighthouse was fully automated in 1971 and the following year a ]helipad
A helipad is a landing area or platform for helicopters and powered lift aircraft.
While helicopters and powered lift aircraft are able to operate on a variety of relatively flat surfaces, a fabricated helipad provides a clearly marked hard s ...
was constructed to enable maintenance work to be undertaken without the need for perilous sea landings.[Munro (1979) pp. 259, 262.]
References
;Notes
;Bibliography
* Bathhurst, Bella (2000) ''The Lighthouse Stevensons''. London. Flamingo.
* Haswell-Smith, Hamish (2004) ''The Scottish Islands''. Edinburgh. Canongate.
* McKirdy, Alan Gordon, John & Crofts, Roger (2007) ''Land of Mountain and Flood: The Geology and Landforms of Scotland''. Edinburgh. Birlinn.
* Munro, R.W. (1979) ''Scottish Lighthouses''. Stornoway. Thule Press.
* Murray, W.H. (1973) ''The Islands of Western Scotland.'' London. Eyre Methuen.
* Nicholson, Christopher. (1995) ''Rock Lighthouses of Britain: The End of an Era?'' Caithness. Whittles.
* Stevenson, Robert Louis (1887) ''Memories and Portraits''. Chatto and Windus. Reprinted by 1st World Publishing, 2004.
* Stevenson, Robert Louis (1995) ''The New Lighthouse on the Dhu Heartach Rock, Argyllshire''. California. Silverado Museum. Based on an 1872 manuscript and edited by Swearingen, R.G.
* Watson, W. J. (1994) ''The Celtic Place-Names of Scotland''. Edinburgh. Birlinn. . First published 1926.
External links
NLB history of Dubh Artach
Retrieved 24 March 2007.
Isle of Erraid website – early history including Stevenson's construction of Dubh Artach
Retrieved 11 December 2014.
{{Lighthouse identifiers , qid2=Q1262994
Uninhabited islands of Argyll and Bute
Category A listed lighthouses
Skerries of Scotland
Lighthouses of Scottish islands