er 1799, when, among many other vessels, H.M.S. _York,_ a
seventy-four-gun ship, went down with all hands on board. Shortly
after this disaster Mr. Stevenson made a careful survey, and
prepared his models for a stone tower, the idea of which was at
first received with pretty general scepticism. Smeaton's Eddystone
tower could not be cited as affording a parallel, for there the rock
is not submerged even at high-water, while the problem of the Bell
Rock was to build a tower of masonry on a sunken reef far distant
from land, covered at every tide to a depth of twelve feet or more,
and having thirty-two fathoms' depth of water within a mile of its
eastern edge.

[13] The grounds for the rejection of the Bill by the House of Lords
in 1802-3 had been that the extent of coast over which dues were
proposed to be levied would be too great. Before going to Parliament
again, the Board of Northern Lights, desiring to obtain support and
corroboration for Mr. Stevenson's views, consulted first Telford,
who was unable to give the matter his attention, and then (on
Stevenson's suggestion) Rennie, who concurred in affirming the
practicability of a stone tower, and supported the Bill when it came
again before Parliament in 1806. Rennie was afterwards appointed by
the Commissioners as advising engineer, whom Stevenson might consult
in cases of emergency. It seems certain that the title of chief
engineer had in this instance no more meaning than the above.
Rennie, in point of fact, proposed certain modifications in
Stevenson's plans, which the latter did not accept; nevertheless
Rennie continued to take a kindly interest in the work, and the two
engineers remained in friendly correspondence during its progress.
The official view taken by the Board as to the quarter in which lay
both the merit and the responsibility of the work may be gathered
from a minute of the Commissioners at their first meeting held after
Stevenson died; in which they record their regret "at the death of
this zealous, faithful, and able officer, _to whom is due the honour
of conceiving and executing the Bell Rock Lighthouse_." The matter
is briefly summed up in the "Life" of Robert Stevenson by his son
David Stevenson (A. & C. Black, 1878), and fully discussed, on the
basis of official facts and figures, by the same writer in a lett