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

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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. The family had a mild tendency to be obsessed by thoughts of a cruel and vindictive God, Alan felt his disease was punishment for making people work on Sundays to complete Skerryvore faster.

Whenever I smell salt water, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors,’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in 1880. To build something that has stood the test of time so far out to sea, in the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, is an outstanding feat, and Bathhurst injects the story with real drama and awe so that, when the unaccommodating waves take out a year’s work, we feel the workers’ sorrow, but are invigorated by their determination to continue. In Scottland, the ancestors of the renowned author Robert Louis Stevenson are more famous than the author himself. His skills as an editor would have helped this otherwise fascinating account of the Stevenson lighthouses. Robert Stevenson, as benefits the founding patriarch haunted all his sons and comes over as a particularly troubled and fearful person, who everyone else had to work round.There is more to this incredible history than lugging blocks of granite and installing lighthouse lenses.

A very interesting history and surprising, that despite being overshadowed by Robert Louis Stevenson's literature, his forebears were phenomenal engineers of the Victorian era and particularly of Scottish Lighthouses.Starting at the end of the 18 th century, the men of this family undertook the design and construction of dozens of lighthouses along the rugged Scottish coast. Elsewhere, many Irish Lighthouses and Lighthouses in the Colonies were fitted with apparatus prepared under the superintendence of Robert Stevenson. And even when lighthouses were starting to be built around Britain, there was often the excuse that 'if God had wanted a lighthouse there, he would have put one there'. an endearment (thank you, my little Muckle Flugga), and an exclamation (Muckle Flugga, it's hot today! 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.