The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson

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The book is written for the layperson, so it includes both history and technology, and it attempts to go fairly light on the tech side, but while still explaining the extraordinary achievements. Alan Stevenson worked on the reflectors and lenses to improve the light output form lighthouses which in place still used candle light, Skerryvore was above the high tide line but remote in the Hebrides and stormy - the first year's work to establish barracks for the 150 craftsmen required to build the lighthouse, fixing - iron bars in to the rock to hold a wooden structure was destroyed by winter storms. Scotland’s coast is dotted with 207 lighthouses, the majority of which were designed by multiple generations of one famed engineering family: the Stevensons. They would actually try to make ships run aground by putting coal fires on points of land to indicate a safe passage that was actually a rocky shoal, and they would rescue goods but let the sailors drown.

Her journalism has appeared in a variety of major publications, including the Washington Post and the Sunday Times. But aside from a natural desire to read about nineteenth century civil engineering cruelly destroying the economies of local communities that benefited from wrecked ships and an understandable compulsion to know how a 19th century engineer monetised and publicised their work we're reading to understand Robert Louis Stevenson, a book like this and Bathurst says that he was the Stevenson she was most in love with, is part of the archaeology of his (un)consciousness and mental world. The Stevensons started to merge into one for me, and I had trouble remembering which was Muckle Flugga and which was Skerryvore and which Stevenson built which.Thomas turned out to be a competent engineer who built Dubh Artach and Chicken Rock, but is probably best known as the father of Robert Louis Stevenson. The same driven energy which Robert Louis Stevenson put into writing, his ancestors put into lighting the darkness of the seas. Where the kindle version falls flat is without more pictures of the actual lighthouses (there are some drawings etc). The name "Robert Louis Stevenson" probably rings a bell for most of us - he did author a few famous literary classics like "Treasure Island" and "The Strange Case of Dr.

Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook).Thomas Stevenson was both a lighthouse designer and meteorologist who designed over 30 lighthouses over the course of his life. Skerryvore is one that gets fully discussed (and as a youngster I often wondered why RLS had a Skerryvore editioni of his works) and it seems to have been one of the most difficult to complete, bearing in mind that it was 38. The early parts of the book that covered the history of getting lighthouse construction started despite political and cultural resistance was the most interesting. He was also an inventor of intermittent and flashing lights, for which he received a gold medal from the King of the Netherlands, as a mark of his Majesty’s approbation. An interesting history of the family who built lighthouses in Scotland and beyond, whose family name was immortalised by the author Robert Louis Stevenson, along with a select few of the works … I would have rated it higher but for the authors annoying habit of repeating information, two or more times throughout the book.

As well as the sheer number of lighthouses the Stevensons contributed to, the family also championed key engineering developments that fundamentally changed the course of lighthouse building forever. The workforce suffered from sea sickness and inadequate quantities of beer, traditionally lighthouse keepers were expected to maintain a cow and fend for themselves, Skerryvore was so difficult to reach that instead Alan recommended enhanced rations for the lighthouse keepers.Overall, I think my interest level would have been better addressed by a thorough magazine or web article.