Robert Stevenson
Books
- Eleven Miles Out Robert Stevenson, John Rennie, and the Building of the Bell Rock Lighthouse · Liszt Think
Eleven miles off the Scottish coast, a reef lies submerged for twenty hours a day. In the early nineteenth century, raising a granite tower on this treacherous foundation seemed impossible.
- The Rock and the Reckoning…ith, who oversaw shipping on the eastern coast, had determined as early as 1799 to build a light there. They commissioned Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson to devise a design, but the proposal was shelved due to concerns about cost, the radical nature of the plan, and Stevenson’s relative youth…
- The Engineer’s Apprenticeship…t the ebb, a black scrape of basalt twelve miles off the Caithness coast, and in October 1798 the sea had not let it alone for three weeks. Robert Stevenson, twenty-two years old and three years into his apprenticeship with the Northern Lighthouse Board, watched from the deck of the tender as th…
- A Ship Moored Over the Reef…clearing seawater from the foundation holes. The ship rolled gently at its mooring, a mile off the Bell Rock, while the master of the work, Robert Stevenson, stood amidships with a slate and a pocket watch. The tide tables said the reef would clear at five. The sky said nothing yet. The men wait…