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

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He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. As far as showcasing Scotland’s locations and wildlife are concerned, it seemed an opportunity to capture something that had not been done before. And, as far as culture and social heritage are concerned, you have the fact that one family built the majority of Scotland’s lighthouses – it’s absolutely incredible. I am not sure Scots know that the Stevensons built so many lighthouses.” At Sumburgh Head, Robert had made a detailed survey to identify the best place to build. He chose the top of a cliff and, with a relatively short tower, the light could be seen for 24 miles in 1832. “Some lights never made that distance even in the 20th century,” observes Strachan.

Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow in 1772 to Alan and Jean Lillie Stevenson. His father died while Robert was still young, so he was educated at a charity school. His mother remarried Thomas Smith, a lamp maker, mechanic and civil engineer who had been appointed to the inaugural Northern Lighthouse Board in 1786. 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. ‘When the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father!’ There were other forces arrayed against the solutions as well, such as a fear that French invaders would use the lights to set safer courses --- a genuine worry given that construction was going on during Napoleon's time. And the civil authorities felt like it was a private problem for ship owners, not something that society should spend money on. This article contains text from a publication now in the public domain: Biographical Sketch of the Late Robert Stevenson: Civil Engineer (1851), by Alan Stevenson All featured authors’ books are available via Gallovidia Books of Kirkcudbright from their physical or online shopRobert and his father, Alan, are memorialized on the gravestone of his grandfather, a Glasgow merchant — also named Robert Stevenson - who died in 1764 and was buried in the churchyard of Glasgow Cathedral. The Stevenson family of lighthouse engineers have a strong connection with Edinburgh. It was from here that Thomas Smith first started his work with the lighthouse service. Robert Stevenson later married into the family, and many more generations of the family followed in his footsteps. There are two types of building plans in the Stevenson archive – those relating to industrial buildings and those relating to civic buildings in Edinburgh. Those relating to industrial buildings include farms and quarries but are predominantly of mills. This was likely associated with the family’s ongoing expertise in river engineering and the manipulation and movement of water. Geographically, these plans of industrial buildings range across all of Scotland and date from across the nineteenth century. This is a reread for me, as we're planning a trip to Scotland and I want to familiarize myself with the country from a lot of angles. It's a well-done book, though I can't follow the technical commentary at times, and had to look up terms online.

Sound: A Memoir of Hearing Lost and Found". Shelf Awareness. November 2, 2018 . Retrieved 2023-02-10. TIDESPACE TALKS LAND series starts with a conversation with TIDESPACE Writer In Residence Bella Bathurst. Her acute first hand observations on a contemporary farm, of the significant changes in relationships between one generation to the next and with and within the same land in her book FIELD WORKS - What Land Does To People & What People Do To Land makes a very significant read. Another first-hand account came from a former keeper of the Pentland Skerries Lighthouse who, for the first time, recalled rescuing survivors from an East German cargo ship carrying sugar from Cuba in 1965. Later reports from a local fisherman suggested that the cargo was in fact hiding nuclear weapons amongst the sugar. The city has twelve main regions. Of particular interest with lighthouse connections is the region of Leith. Leith Stevenson served as an apprentice civil engineer to his stepfather, Thomas Smith. He was so successful at it that, at age 19, he was given responsibility for supervising the erection of a lighthouse on Little Cumbrae island in the River Clyde. His next project was overseeing the building of lighthouses on Orkney. While working on these projects, he continued his civil engineering studies: He diligently practised surveying and architectural drawing, and attended maths and physics lectures at the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow.These materials depict some coastal towns and villages in Scotland in great detail. They are highly geographically diverse and include some early detailed maps of remote parts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. For some places, the development of the harbour can be traced over time through the archive as the Stevensons returned to the same location to make improvements and repairs to the earlier work of their ancestors. The book is about exactly what it says in the title. The father, uncles, grandfather and, step great grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson were all pioneering engineers who were responsible for building some of the most remote lighthouses around the Scottish coast. Bella Bathurst’s epic story of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ancestors and the building of the Scottish coastal lighthouses against impossible odds. Plan showing alterations to the River Oich at Loch Oich to construct the Caledonian Canal (1853). MS.5846, 20