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

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After being pressured to join the family business, Robert Louis Stevenson pursued a literary career that produced “ Kidnapped”and “ Treasure Island”. In the 18th century Thomas Smith married Robert Stevenson’s widowed mother which merged their two families, and thus began from scratch the building of the lighthouses in Scotland.

During his term as chief of the Northern Lighthouse Board, Alan Stevenson built 13 lighthouses in and around Scotland between 1843 and 1853, and over the course of his life designed over 30 in total.It was very poorly edited, with many typos and several sentences that do not begin with a capital letter. Robert showed himself as savvy at politicking as he was at engineering to be charged with the design and construction of the Bell Rock, the world’s old sea-washed lighthouse, located over ten miles off the eastern coast, effectively on a rock. The author also does an excellent job of explaining the need for the lighthouses and the forces that opposed them.

Under his stepfather, Robert’s engineering skills rapidly advance, and he built some lighthouses while still serving his apprenticeship. Her journalism has appeared in a variety of major publications, including the Washington Post and the Sunday Times. Of course, the famous Stevenson family were responsible but thankfully RLS decided that the life of an engineer was not for him. Against all odds, what could be a more or less detailed report of complex engineering works (especially for the 19th century) turns out to have an unsuspected dose of epic, drama and heroism, as well as a particularly nostalgic period portrait.

And preachers would tell them on Sunday, "It's the will of god to put rocks there and to send ships to be battered against them.

There is a brief treatment on the reluctant participation of author Robert Louis Stevenson in the family business, but the book is certainly not focused on the life of said author.Where the kindle version falls flat is without more pictures of the actual lighthouses (there are some drawings etc). Imagine being inside a lighthouse when a storm batters it for days upon days, and an ocean swell taller than the lighthouse itself washes around you. Black sheep Robert Louis did nae bad out of writing, but primarch Robert Stevenson was a force to be reckoned with. I for one had no idea that the 14 lighthouses dotting the Scottish coast were all built by the same Stevenson family that produced Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland's most famous novelist. What I gleaned, I am sure I do not know; but indeed I had already my own private determination to be an author; I loved the art of words and the appearances of life; and travelers, and headers, and rubble, and polished ashlar, and pierres perdues, and even the thrilling question of the string-course, interested me only (if they interested me at all) as properties for some possible romance or as words to add to my vocabulary.