Lighthouse Stevensons, The (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Harpercollins Publishers Ltd. (Editor), Richard Dominick (Author) "Captain George Manby had reached the age of forty without having contributed significantly to life..." (more)
Key Phrases: lighthouse commissioners, lighthouse work, lighthouse yacht, Bell Rock, Trinity House, Northern Lights (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; First edition. edition (August 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060194278
• ISBN-13: 978-0060194277
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #385,784 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masters of lighthouse construction, July 7, 2000

By	Patricia L. MacAodha (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lighthouse Stevensons: The Extraordinary Story of the Building of the Scottish Lighthouses by the Ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson (Hardcover)

"Extraordinary" is certainly the appropriate term for Bathurst's excellent documentation of the incredible Stevenson family of lighthouse engineers. Up to this time, most of the attention toward this families accomplishments has focused on the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, and left others of his amazing family in the dust. Bathurst's research is impressive and her ability to tell this story is thorough, yet highly enjoyable(I missed my bus twice.). The most exciting part really is about patriarch Robert Stevenson's building of the lighthouse at Bell Rock. You can feel the sense of horror as Stevenson notices their ship has pulled away from it's moorings, and his realization that death may be near as the tide rises. If you don't have a summer book yet, and you like good non-fiction. Try this one!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great story well written. I enjoyed it., November 5, 1999

By	wayne e. feely ([e-mail]) "wef117" (Philadelphia PA) - See all my reviews

A wonderful book about the Stevenson's and their fantastic lighthouses. I throughly enjoyed reading this book. Several small errors; Robert Stevenson could not have used Dynamite in the early 1800's because it was not invented by Nobel until 1862. If the NBL was still consulting with Michael Faraday in 1883 it must have been by ouija board because Faraday died in 1867. The weight of a square foot of water is zero while a cubic foot of sea water weights 64lb.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy the UK version, January 15, 2000

By A Customer

The original British version does not have the typos, and can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk The British version has been very well received and I'd recommend it very highly. I understand the US version is being corrected for typos and re-printed.