A new dawn: Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities. Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete. The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic. The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades. Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell. By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops. ...
Dangerous Shores:
The Scottish coastline, with its submerged rocky moraines, is known for its hazards to navigation. The Bell Rock (also known as Inchcape Rock) extends 427 m (1,400 ft) across the shipping routes between the firths of the Forth and Tay, and is particularly insidious because, except at low tide, it lies completely hidden by the waves. From the earliest days of sail, shipwrecks here were common. A local legend tells of a 14th Century abbot of Aberbrothock (modern Arbroath) who ordered a bell to be hung on a timber buoy attached to the rock, where its clanging in the restless waves would serve as a warning. The structure gave the rock its name, but did not last long. By the 18th Century, ship losses on the coasts around Britain were so frequent that merchants lobbied Parliament in Westminster to build lighthouses. This led to the establishment, in 1786, of the Northern Lighthouse Trust.
Stevenson
takes the lead:
In 1799 Robert Stevenson, then a
young civil engineer eager to make his name, first proposed a lighthouse on the
Bell Rock, but it was not until 1804, when the Royal Navy Ship HMS York
foundered there, taking 491 lives, that the sceptical Lighthouse Board agreed
to the expensive (and, many believed, foolhardy) project. Stevenson already has some experience – when
he was just 19, he had supervised construction of a lighthouse at Little
Cumbrae on the Firth of Clyde – but he was still relatively unknown and so the
cautious Lighthouse Board appointed John Rennie, an eminent engineer of the day
renowned for canals and aqueducts, to supervise the project.
The upstart Stevenson treated
Rennie with a cannily aggressive respect: the barrage of letter (more than 82
exist) that he sent ot Rennie during the construction, dutifully requesting
counsel and reporting on progress, served to keep Rennie usefully employed back
in London, writing careful replies full of sage advice that Stevenson did not
hesitate to ignore when it suited him.
Stevenson was also fortunate that Rennie suffered from seasickness; he
visited the rock only twice during construction.
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