  SIRE, It is with much diffidence that the author now lays before Your Majesty, an Account of the arduous national undertaking of erecting a Light-house on the Bell Rock,—a sunk reef, lying about eleven miles from the shore, and so situated as to have long proved an object of dread to mariners on the eastern coast of Scotland, especially when making for the Friths of Forth and Tay. This edifice being of the utmost consequence to the safety of Your Majesty’s Ships of War upon the North Sea station, and of the commercial shipping of this part of the empire, he presumes to hope for Your Majesty’s favourable acceptance of his work. From the known partiality, also, of Your Majesty for naval excursions, which so recently led the Royal Squadron within a comparatively short distance of the Bell Rock Light-house, in the course of Your Majesty’s most gracious Visit to your ancient Kingdom of Scotland, he flatters himself that Your Majesty may feel an additional interest in the subject of this volume. The Introduction to this work brings generally under Your Majesty’s notice, the important labours of the Scottish Light-house Board, appointed by an act of the 26th Parliament of Your Majesty’s illustrious Father. Since that period, Light-house stations have been partially extended over the whole northern shores of Your Majesty’s British dominions, from Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth, to the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, including in this circuit the Hebrides, and Orkney and Shetland Islands. Much, however, still remains to be done; and the Board is gradually proceeding, as the state of its funds will permit, in placing additional Sea-Lights on certain intermediate points of the coast. It cannot fail to be gratifying to Your Majesty to learn, as the result of the exertions of this Board, that the mariner may now navigate those regions with a degree of security and confidence quite unknown to Your Majesty’s Royal Ancestor James the Fifth, when he sailed around this coast in the 16th century, or even, at a recent period, to Your Majesty’s Royal Brother William Henry Duke of Clarence, when in early life he traversed those seas. With unfeigned sentiments of loyalty and attachment, the author subscribes himself, Your Majesty’s |
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