Dubh Artach

Dubh Artach is a small, dark basalt skerry lying 29 kilometres west of Colonsay and 24 kilometres south-west of the Ross of Mull. The rock rises only 11 metres above the sea and measures 73 metres long by 40 metres wide. It sits at the eastern end of an 80-kilometre submarine valley that funnels Atlantic swells into towering waves. The name means ‘The Black Rock’ in Scottish Gaelic, though older forms such as An Dubh Iar-stac and Duibh-hirteach have also been recorded. Before the lighthouse, the reef was known as St John’s Rock and had claimed at least thirty ships between 1800 and 1854. The lighthouse was designed by Thomas Stevenson and built between 1867 and 1872 by the Stevenson family of engineers. Construction required a shore station on Erraid and a fleet of barges towed by the steamer Dhuheartach. Workers lived in an iron barrack that withstood waves breaking 23 metres above sea level. Despite gales and shifting stone blocks, the tower’s solid base of 1,840 tons was completed by 1869. The finished light, first in Britain to use paraffin, rises 31 metres above its foundation in seventy-seven courses of stone. Visitors today see a stark, rounded mass of dark green augite rock rising from the churning sea. The 44-metre tower stands on a broad platform that endures waves reported as high as 28 metres. The shore station on Erraid, once the construction base, remains as a quiet reminder of the hazards overcome. Around the skerry, seabirds wheel above the white water while the Atlantic roars against the black rock. The view from the lantern offers only the endless horizon and the distant islands of Colonsay and Mull.