The Stevensons

The History of Lighthouses

Course 8 · Chapter 4 · The Stevensons and the Bell Rock

In 1786 an Act of Parliament set up a board to build lighthouses on the Scottish coast, and over the next century the engineers it employed, a single Edinburgh family, built most of them. This chapter tells the story of the Northern Lighthouse Board, of Thomas Smith, who started it, and of Robert Stevenson, whose tower on the Bell Rock was one of the great feats of engineering of its time. It then follows his sons and grandsons, among them the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Names, dates and measurements are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Northern Lighthouse Board

The Act

In 1786 Parliament created the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, usually called the Northern Lighthouse Board, to build and run lights on the Scottish coast and the Isle of Man (check). The Board was funded by dues charged to passing ships, and it met in Edinburgh, where it still has its headquarters.

The first lights

The first four lighthouses were at Kinnaird Head, the Mull of Kintyre, North Ronaldsay and Scalpay, lit between 1787 and 1789 (check). They were modest towers built by local masons, each with a lamp and a reflector.

Thomas Smith

The Board's first engineer, Thomas Smith (1752 to 1815), was an Edinburgh lamp-maker and tinsmith with no engineering training (check). He introduced oil lamps with polished reflectors, a big improvement on the coal fires, and trained his stepson, Robert Stevenson.

A family business Robert Stevenson married Smith's daughter and succeeded him, and his sons and grandsons followed him as engineers to the Board for most of the next century (check). It was an unusual arrangement: a public body relying on one family for its engineering. It gave continuity and a house style, and also raises the question of how far the Board's records were shaped by the family's own account of its work.

The Bell Rock

Point (check each)Detail
The dangerThe Bell Rock, or Inchcape Rock, is a reef about eleven miles off Arbroath on the east coast of Scotland. It is covered by the sea at high tide and was a deadly hazard to shipping. A storm in 1799 wrecked many vessels, which increased the pressure to act.
The legendA story tells of a bell placed on the rock by an abbot of Arbroath, which was cut away by a pirate who was later wrecked on it. The poet Robert Southey told it in a ballad, and the story is unproven (check).
The engineersRobert Stevenson drew up the plan and directed the work. The great engineer John Rennie was consulted, and the question of who deserved credit for the design was later disputed (check).
The workFrom 1807 to 1810 workers landed on the rock at low tide for a few hours at a time. They lived on a ship moored nearby and then, in the second year, in a wooden barrack raised on legs above the rock. Blocks of granite were cut on shore and carried out by boat.
The towerIt is about 35 metres high, built of interlocking blocks in the manner of Smeaton's tower on the Eddystone (Chapter 3), and was first lit on 1 February 1811 (check). The light alternated red and white flashes so that it could be told apart from other lights.
The recordStevenson wrote an account of the building, published in 1824, which is the main source for the story (check).

The work was dangerous. The workers' lives were in the hands of the tide, and on one occasion in 1807 a boat failed to return and the men on the rock were nearly stranded (check). A man was lost in 1808 (check).

Skerryvore and Beyond

  • Skerryvore. Alan Stevenson, Robert's eldest son, built a tower on a reef off Tiree in the Inner Hebrides between 1838 and 1844. It is about 48 metres tall, with a concave curve like Smeaton's, and was a difficult job in a remote and wild place (check).
  • The other towers. The family built or advised on many lights, including Muckle Flugga in Shetland, the most northerly lighthouse in the British Isles, finished in 1858, and Dubh Artach, a rock tower off Mull, finished in 1872 (check).
  • Other work. Robert Stevenson also designed harbours, roads and bridges. His sons David and Thomas continued the work, and Thomas's name is also linked with a type of weather instrument shelter, the Stevenson screen, still used at weather stations (check).
  • Optics. The family were among the first British engineers to adopt the Fresnel lens, and wrote technical works on lighthouse design (Chapter 5).

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson, born in Edinburgh in 1850, was the son of Thomas Stevenson and the grandson of Robert. He began studying engineering at Edinburgh University to join the family firm, switched to law and then became a writer, best known for Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (check). As a young man he sailed with his father on inspections of lighthouses, including in the Orkney and Shetland islands, and he later wrote about the experience, which fed into his fiction (check). The connection is a good example of how the history of engineering and the history of literature overlap.

A British comparison The Bell Rock and the Eddystone are the two great rock towers of the age of masonry. Stevenson learned from Smeaton, but worked in a harsher location, where the working time was shorter and the supply boats farther away. The Scottish towers were also built with Scottish materials: granite from Aberdeenshire and elsewhere (check). Edinburgh readers can see the Stevensons' world at the Board's headquarters in George Street, at the Robert Louis Stevenson sites in the New Town, and at the Signal Tower museum in Arbroath, the shore base of the Bell Rock builders (check).
Check the details The Stevenson family wrote much of the history of their own work, so the credit given to individuals, especially in the argument with Rennie, is an interested account. Dates, heights and costs vary in sources, and the Inchcape bell legend has no solid proof. Check them against the Board's records and modern histories of engineering.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Treat Stevenson's own account of the Bell Rock as a source: what can it tell you, what are its limits, and what would you set beside it?

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Exercise 2

Compare the building of the Bell Rock with that of the Eddystone (Chapter 3): what problems did the two share and how did the Bell Rock differ?

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Exercise 3

Test the claim "The Stevensons built the lighthouses of the world" and give a more careful sentence.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Board: Northern Lighthouse Board, 1786, Edinburgh (check)
  • People: Thomas Smith, Robert Stevenson, Alan Stevenson, Thomas Stevenson, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Rennie
  • Towers: Bell Rock (lit 1811), Skerryvore (1844), Muckle Flugga (1858), Dubh Artach (1872) (check)
  • Source: Stevenson's own account, an interested record