CHAPTER II: THE SERVICE OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS



I

It were hard to imagine a contrast more sharply defined than that
between the lives of the men and women of this family: the one so
chambered, so centred in the affections and the sensibilities; the
other so active, healthy, and expeditious. From May to November,
Thomas Smith and Robert Stevenson were on the mail, in the saddle,
or at sea; and my grandfather, in particular, seems to have been
possessed with a demon of activity in travel. In 1802, by
direction of the Northern Lighthouse Board, he had visited the
coast of England from St. Bees, in Cumberland, and round by the
Scilly Islands to some place undecipherable by me; in all a
distance of 2500 miles. In 1806 I find him starting 'on a tour
round the south coast of England, from the Humber to the Severn.'
Peace was not long declared ere he found means to visit Holland,
where he was in time to see, in the navy-yard at Helvoetsluys,
'about twenty of Bonaparte's ENGLISH FLOTILLA lying in a state of
decay, the object of curiosity to Englishmen.' By 1834 he seems to
have been acquainted with the coast of France from Dieppe to
Bordeaux; and a main part of his duty as Engineer to the Board of
Northern Lights was one round of dangerous and laborious travel.

In 1786, when Thomas Smith first received the appointment, the
extended and formidable coast of Scotland was lighted at a single