The south end of the isle of Lismore lies at a major branching of the seaway going north: the Sound of Mull on the way to the Western Isles; the main branch of Loch Linnhe (the Lynn of Morvern), leading to Fort William and the Caledonian canal; and the more sheltered Lynn of Lorn to the east.
In the middle of the channel between Lismore and Duart on Mull, lies the infamous Lady Rock (scene of the marooning of a Campbell wife by a MacLean of Duart in the 16th century), which is covered at high tide, and there are violent and capricious tides where the four bodies of water meet.
There was a great need for warning of these hazards to shipping but it was not until 1833 that Robert Stevenson completed more than 20 years of designing and engineering lighthouses with his last on Eilean Musdile at the south-west tip of Lismore.
Whatever the actual meaning of Musdile in Old Norse, it was clearly one of the important seamarks in the Viking era; even in more recent times, with lights and beacons, there have been major wrecks on Lady Rock (the Mountaineer paddle steamer in 1889, and the Clydesdale cargo steamer on 1905). The records of the Northern Lighthouse Board, and official census returns, complemented by materials from the Lismore archive, shine a
