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

Amazon.com
"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


From Publishers Weekly
A real-life Shipping News, Bathurst's flamboyant and elegantly written saga is bursting with life, laced with romantic dreams, oversized ambitions, murder, piracy, nepotism, smoldering feuds, scientific ingenuity and the lonely heroism of men battling the elements. Bathurst tells how four generations of Robert Louis Stevenson's family designed and built the 97 manned lighthouses that speckle the Scottish coast. A reluctant engineer turned writer, RLS transmuted his lighthouse-building expeditions around Scotland's northern coast into Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but he rebelled against his quarrelsome father, Thomas, who tried to corral him into the family business. The rest is literary history. Much less well-known is the Lighthouse Stevensons' extraordinary family history: they built harbors, canals, railways and street lighting systems, and contributed numerous inventions to optics, engineering and architecture. Yet, out of stubborn altruistic pride, no family member ever took out a patent on any of their inventions. Even readers with no special interest in the sea or Scotland will be swept up in Bathurst's narrative, intriguingly illustrated with photographs, prints and drawings. Sir Walter Scott, Michael Faraday and Daniel Defoe stalk through these pages, and Bathurst unveils the Lighthouse Stevensons' battles, accomplishments, frustrations and personal tragedies against a backdrop of the Scottish Enlightenment, the advent of British naval supremacy, the Crimean War, the destruction of Highland society and the uneasy marriage of Scotland and England. She also devotes a marvelous, wistful chapter to the lost art of lighthouse-keepingAall of Britain's lighthouses are now automated, computers having replaced keepers. Her exuberant family drama is an enchantment. Author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Robert Louis Stevenson may have written great literature, but for four generations his family has been noted for building lighthouses. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Raye Snover
Writing with an enchanting eloquence ... Bathurst delivers a family saga that shows how the ingenuity and perseverance of a few could be "for the benefit of the nation as a whole."



"Written with style and feeling. The illustrations are perfect."


From Booklist
Almost a century before Robert Louis Stevenson captured the world's imagination with his tales of adventure and daring, his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, was living out the early chapters of a real-life story no less enthralling. After long and difficult research, Bathurst has rescued that story from obscurity, chronicling the rare courage and astonishing ingenuity with which Louis' grandfather, father, and two uncles raised lighthouses on the perilous Scottish coast. Louis himself would have applauded this stirring narrative about how his kinsmen, without the benefits of modern technology, risked their lives to erect stone towers on lonely points exposed to the fury of nature. Bathurst draws out the shared and distinctive strengths of the four Stevenson engineers by focusing on the four notable lighthouses--Skerryvore, Bell Rock, Dhu Heartach, and Muckle Flugga--that best represent the careers of these pioneers. Focusing on these four lighthouses also permits her to detail the specific kinds of challenges that the Stevensons faced in erecting such structures, from the political opposition of wreckers (whose livelihoods were threatened by making the seas safer) to the woeful inadequacy of the available lighting equipment. Bathurst concedes that in our age of computerized navigation and radio communication, many regard Scotland's lighthouses as anachronisms. But her book about the building of these lifesaving towers will not molder in obsolescence so long as readers marvel at daring feats accomplished against long odds. Bryce Christensen


From Kirkus Reviews
A detailed account of the building of Scotlands lighthouses and the family that engineered them. In this day of elaborate tracking devices like the Global Positioning System, the loss of even one sailor can be national news, so it is a sobering fact that Bathurst presents when she writes that ``by 1800 Lloyds of London estimated that one ship was lost or wrecked every day around Britain; between 1854 and 1879 almost fifty thousand wrecks were registered.'' Since many of these ships were lost around Scotlands rocky shoreline, the movement to build reliable lighthouses to replace the few warning systems in place, such as easily doused beacon fires, would seem not only a necessary, but an obvious step. For reasons political, social, and religious, that step was a long time coming, and Bathurst is at her best when describing the obstacles that faced Robert Stevenson (who was the author Robert Louis Stevensons grandfather) in designing and building Bell Rock, the first truly efficient lighthouse in Scotland. Three of his sons followed him into engineering and continued to build lighthouses (as well as other public works). What makes this familys story remarkable is that, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, engineering ``was not a science then. It was a living art, and it visibly grew under the eyes and between the hands of its practitioners.'' The book, while thorough, lacks momentum, and Bathursts pedestrian prose doesnt often live up to the stories she tells, though there are some striking images hereof the ``wreckers'' who waited for the spoils of shipwreck, watching impassively as ships foundered, or of workmen trapped in a sea-bound barracks by a horrific storm. A diverting exploration of the art and persistence of this family of engineers. (24 b&w illustrations) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.



"[Bathurst's] is a fascinating story, lucidly and elegantly told."



"A gripping history, beautifully written."



"Absorbingly combines social history, family saga and a side glance at the making of a great writer."



"[D]eeply accomplished . . . masterly. . . . Bathurst's splendid book will preserve the memory of great deeds performed in a heroic era."



"Stunning. . . . It's hard to imagine many writers who could make civil engineering thrilling, but that's what Bathurst does."



"Written with style and feeling. The illustrations are perfect."



"Highly readable."



"Bathurst . . . [writes] with an enchanting eloquence."



"Absorbing. . . . Bathurst is to be commended for conveying potentially arid information with engaging verve."



"Engrossing. . . . The Lighthouse Stevensons has all of what you look for in a novel--great characters, catch-your-breath suspense. . . . A wonderful adventure."


Book 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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