ubject of much discussion, and various unsuccessful attempts
had been made to erect a beacon of some sort thereon.

There is a legend that in days of old one of the abbots of the
neighbouring monastery of Aberbrothoc erected a bell on the Inchcape
Rock, which was tolled in rough weather by the action of the waves on a
float attached to the tongue, and thus mariners were warned at night and
in foggy weather of their approach to the rock, the great danger of
which consists in its being a sunken reef, lying twelve miles from the
nearest land, and exactly in the course of vessels making for the firths
of Forth and Tay. The legend further tells how that a Danish pirate,
named Ralph the Rover, in a mischievous mood, cut the bell away, and
that, years afterwards, he obtained his appropriate reward by being
wrecked on the Bell Rock, when returning from a long cruise laden with
booty.

Whether this be true or not is an open question, but certain it is that
no beacon of any kind was erected on this rock until the beginning of
the nineteenth century, after a great storm in 1799 had stirred the
public mind, and set springs in motion, which from that time forward
have never ceased to operate.

Many and disastrous were the shipwrecks that occurred during the storm
referred to, which continued, with little intermission, for three days.
Great numbers of ships were driven from their moorings in the Downs and
Yarmouth Roads; and these, together with all vessels navigating the
German Ocean at that time, were drifted upon the east coast of Scotland.

It may not, perhaps, be generally known that there are only three great
inlets or estuaries to which the mariner steers when overtaken by
easterly storms in the North Sea--namely, the Humber, and the firths of
Forth and Moray. The mouth of the Thames is too much encumbered by
sand-banks to be approached at night or during bad weather. The Humber
is also considerably obstructed in this way, so that the Roads of Leith,
in the Firth of Forth, and those of Cromarty, in the Moray Firth, are
the chief places of resort in easterly gales. But both of these had
their special risks.

On the one hand, there was the danger of mistaking the Dornoch Firth for
the Moray, as it lies only a short way to the north of the latter; and,
in the case of the Firth of Forth, there was the terrible Bell Rock.

Now, during the storm of which we write, the fear of those two dangers
was so strong upon seamen tha