| The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson | 
 enlarge | Authors: Bella Bathurst, Harpercollins Uk
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 490647
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0007639449
Dewey Decimal Number: 941
EAN: 9780060932268
ASIN: 0060932260
Publication Date: November 1, 2000
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Condition: ships next day by first class mail
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Amazon.com Review
"Whenever I smell salt water, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors." --Robert Louis Stevenson The 14 lighthouses dotting the Scottish coast were all built by the same family that produced Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland's most famous novelist. Surprised? Bella Bathurst throws a powerful, revolving light into the darkness of this historical tradition. Robert Louis was a sickly fellow, and--unlike the rest of his strong-willed, determined family--certainly not up to the astonishing rigors of lighthouse building, which is vividly described here. Constructing these towering structures in the most inhospitable places imaginable (such as the aptly named Cape Wrath), using only 19th-century technology, is an achievement that beggars belief. One thinks of the pyramid building of ancient Egypt. At the Skerryvore lighthouse, the ground rocks were prepared by hand (even though the "gneiss could blunt a pick in three blows") in waves and winds "strong enough to lift a man bodily off the rock" and that "it took 120 hours to dress a single stone for the outside of the tower, and 320 hours to dress one of the central stones. In total 5000 tons of stone were quarried and shipped"--and all by hand. It is mind-boggling stuff: you'll look at lighthouses with a new respect. --Adam Roberts, Amazon.co.uk
Product Description
For centuries the seas around Scotland were notorious for shipwrecks. Mariners' only aids were skill, luck, and single coal-fire light on the east coast, which was usually extinguished by rain. In 1786 the Northern Lighthouse Trust was established, with Robert Stevenson appointed as chief engineer a few years later. In this engrossing book, Bella Bathhurst reveals that the Stevensons not only supervised the construction of the lighthouses under often desperate conditions but also perfected a design of precisely chiseled interlocking granite blocks that would withstand the enormous waves that batter these stone pillars. The same Stevensons also developed the lamps and lenses of the lights themselves, which "sent a gleam across the wave" and prevented countless ships from being lost at sea.
While it is the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson that brought fame to the family name, this memorizing account shows how his extraordinary ancestors changed the shape of the Scotland coast-against incredible odds and with remarkable technical ingenuity.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 'The sea is a tameable thing, and the lights have made it safe.' June 14, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This slender book gives a sense of the achievements of the Lighthouse Stevensons by concentrating on their work between 1786 and 1890. By specifically focussing on the lighthouse most closely associated with each of their respective engineers, the reader gains both an appreciation of the work involved as well as the talents of each of these remarkable men.
I first stumbled across the Lighthouse Stevensons when reading about the construction of the Bell Rock lighthouse. I marvelled at the engineering, noted that Robert Stevenson was Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather and resolved to read more about the achievements of this family.
Ms Bathurst's book, a blend of history and biography, has whetted my appetite for more. The four Lighthouse Stevensons discussed are Robert (Bell Rock); his sons Alan (Skerryvore); David (Muckle Flugga; and Tom (Dubh Artach). While the engineering feats are touched on, the detail provided will not overwhelm a general reader.
Highly recommended to those who are interested in engineering, in human achievement as well as in the Stevenson family.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
 Amazing places February 11, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I happen to think that the history of engineering is amazing, awesome. inspiring. This book is about the Stevenson family who built the majority of lighthouses around England in Victorian times. In the process they established procedures for what is now the profession of engineering.
I find that words are failing me so perhaps you should Google up a few pictures of Skerryvore, Bell Rock, Dubh Artach, Muckle Flugga, Inchkeith and then try to imagine how you would build them in an age before machine power. Absolutely awesome!!
 An introduction and not a definitive work. May 24, 2005
This book should appeal to anyone with an interest in lighthouses or the sea, engineering, Scotland or, although there is not much about him in the book, Robert Louis Stevenson. His father, cousins, uncles, grandfather and a non-Stevenson great-grandfather are responsible for the construction of a surprising number of lighthouses, some of them in the most challenging locations. Details of how this was accomplished by four extraordinary generations of a single family are competently sketched by apparently first time author Bella Bathurst. However, the book left me thirsting for more detailed descriptions of exactly how these sometimes astonishing feats of engineering were accomplished. A good introduction to the subject and perhaps also to the nascent profession of engineering. Five stars if all you want is an introduction.
The Other Scottish Enlightenment..... September 23, 2003
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Bella Bathurst is a bit of a conjurer. In just over 260 pages, she has managed to provide a lot of fascinating, exciting and even quirky information concerning the construction of the Scottish lighthouses, plus well-crafted biographical portraits of members of four generations of the Stevenson family. She gets the reader hooked immediately, interestingly enough, by writing about someone who was not even a member of the Stevenson clan - Captain George Manby. Manby, around 1805, came up with a method of keeping rowboats afloat in heavy seas, to be used in conjunction with a "rescue line" tossed out to foundering ships which were close to shore. In conjunction, these would be used to rescue seamen before their ships sank and they drowned. This didn't appeal to the people called "wreckers," who depended upon booty from the sunken ships for their livelihood. In their view, it was better to let crew members drown - after all, they might put up a fuss concerning the theft of the ships' cargo. When, in 1807, the naive Manby let some wreckers take him out on a boat so he could test the seaworthiness of his new and buoyant rowboats, the wreckers intentionally capsized the boat - hoping to drown Manby, who couldn't swim. (Fortunately for Manby, he managed not to drown.) This anecdote ties into the rest of the book, because when the Stevenson family started building lighthouses, the wreckers weren't too thrilled with that development either. So, a lot of the people in the seaside communities didn't exactly put out the welcome mat. Not only that, but the Stevensons' had to put up with "press gangs" trying to shanghai workers so they could man merchant and military ships. Part of this book reads like an adventure tale - with the workers battling the mighty forces of mother nature on remote spits of land that were sometimes 10-15 miles off of the Scottish coast. The workers, at some locations, would have to be transported daily from the mainland - fighting against seasickness and terrific winds and rain. They would sometimes be marooned on the desolate pieces of rock where the lighthouses were being constructed, as savage storms would blow for days or even weeks on end. There is even an Egyptian flavor to the construction - as huge blocks of carefully carved and smoothed stone are transported and painstakingly put together. Each block had its own unique place in the puzzle, and the margins for error were slight- 1/8 of an inch per stone in some cases. This was a case of bullwork being combined with fine craftmanship - all being done under atrocious climatic conditions. It is a tribute to Ms. Bathurst's writing and organizational skills that, even with all of this activity swirling through the pages, we don't lose sight of the Stevensons. We see the patriarch, Robert Stevenson, with his formidable work ethic, energy, and devotion to public duty. Even in his late seventies he was still going, by ship, all along the Scottish coast, on long inspection tours of "his" lighthouses. Religion is also a part of this story - in particular, the Scottish belief in a stern, no-nonsense God: On one project Alan Stevenson, one of Robert's sons, made his men work on the Sabbath days. Later on in life Alan came down with a neurological disorder (which the author speculates was muscular dystrophy). Alan was convinced that God was punishing him for his sins. He tried to atone through prayer and through whatever work he was still able to do. When the disease went into remission, Alan thought he was finally being forgiven. When he got worse, he thought he wasn't doing enough to earn God's forgiveness. This makes heartbreaking reading. The writer, Robert Louis Stevenson (known as Louis), also enters into the story, as his father, Tom, wanted him to continue in the family tradition. Louis made some youthful efforts to accomodate his father but, although engineering and lighthouses were in the blood, this life wasn't for him. We'll never know if this was engineering's loss, but it was certainly literature's gain. When they weren't dealing with 100 mile-per-hour winds and, sometimes, 200 foot waves, the Stevensons also found time to build roads, bridges, harbors, breakwaters, etc. In the preface, Ms. Bathurst says that she didn't attempt to write a definitive biography of the Lighthouse Stevensons, but she hoped the book "will be seen as a kind of taster for the subject, and that anyone wanting to search further will be able to do so." This reader, for one, found this remarkable book to be very tasty indeed.
Let there be lights! June 17, 2002
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
What comes across loud and clear was the desperate need for navigation aids on the coast of Britain in the 18th Century; in 1800, Lloyds reckoned they were losing one ship a day (!) to shipwreck - and these are only the ones reported - the true figure, including small craft, was probably many times that. The lighthouses that did exist were coal-fired, inadequate, confusing and extinguished at the worst possible times - in storms.This book does not pretend to be a treatise on all lighthouses, but specifically those built by the 4 generations of the Stevenson family.
It starts unusually with the youngest, and most famous, of the Stevensons - Robert Louis - who had few dealings in lighthouses, nor any wish to; but his experiences and those of his forebears influenced his life and writings, as in 'Kidnapped' and 'Treasure Island' - both concerned with wrecks and dark deeds on lonely islands.
His unfinished family history is a fount of information (and speculation), however, and this is the reason for his place in the book; the main protagonists come next, starting with his step-great-grandfather, who stumbled into the job of erecting a REAL lighthouse (as opposed to the earlier amateur attempts) on the basis of his experiments with lamps... the rest is history. The chapter on the Bell Rock reads almost like a novel; Rennie, the man originally hired to design and build the light, being gradually ousted by Robert, who claims the work as his own - understandably, as Rennie wanted the kudos, but had no desire for the hardship, only visiting the construction 3 times, whereas Robert thrived on it (but was not averse to a touch of glory).
Of course it all ends in tears, with an acrimonious wrangle dragging on for years; but it established Robert as THE lighthouse engineer, winning him new commisions for roads, canals, bridges etc..
His descendants follow in the family tradition (pushed heavily by Robert), keeping to the same basic design of Smeaton's Eddystone light, they erect lights all round the Scottish coast; incidentally gaining the undying hostility of the hordes of wreckers, whose grisly activities were effectively foiled by the lights. Ms.Bathhurst's writing is fluid, assured and informative, never patronisong or descending into scholarly jargon, and, though very well-researched, (see the comprehensive bibliography), does not pepper the text with notes, foot-notes and references - this is after all a Popular History book. Thoroughly entertaining - highly recommended.*****.
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