The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls | Page 2

and apparatus transplanted, the supply
of oil must be maintained and the men fed, in the same inaccessible and
distant scenes, a whole service with its routine ... had to be called out of
nothing; and a new trade (that of light-keeper) to be taught, recruited
and organized."

Bell Rock was only one of twenty lighthouses Robert Stevenson helped
to build, but it was by far the most difficult one ... and even to-day,
after it has been lighted for more than a hundred years, it still remains
unique--a monument to his skill.
Bell Rock was practically a reef completely submerged at full tide and
only a few feet of its crest visible at low water. To raise a tower on it
meant placing a foundation under water, a new and perilous
experiment.
"Work upon the rock in the earliest stages was confined to the calmest
days of the summer season, when the tides were lowest, the water
smoothest, and the wind in its calmest mood. Under such conditions the
men were able to stay on the site for about five hours....
"One distinct drawback was the necessity to establish a depot some
distance from the erecting site. Those were the days before steam
navigation, and the capricious sailing craft offered the only means of
maintaining communication between rock and shore, and for the
conveyance of men and materials to and fro....
"A temporary beacon was placed on the reef, while adjacent to the site
selected for the tower a smith's forge was made fast, so as to withstand
the dragging motion of the waves when the rock was submerged. The
men were housed on the Smeaton, which, during the spells of work on
the rock, rode at anchor a short distance away in deep water." [Footnote:
Talbot, "Lightships and Lighthouses."]
Once the engineers were all but lost when the Smeaton slipped her
moorings and left them stranded on the rock.
In spite of all the obstacles, the work was completed at the end of two
years and the light was shown for the first time February 1, 1811.
"I found Robert Stevenson an appreciative and intelligent companion,"
writes Sir Walter Scott in his journal, speaking of a cruise he made
among the islands of Scotland with a party of engineers. The notes
made by him on this trip were used afterward in his two stories, "The

Pirate" and "Lord of the Isles."
"My grandfather was king in the service to his finger-tips," wrote Louis
Stevenson. "All should go his way, from the principal light-keeper's
coat to the assistant's fender, from the gravel in the garden walks to the
bad smell in the kitchen, or the oil spots on the storeroom floor. It
might be thought there was nothing more calculated to awaken men's
resentment, and yet his rule was not more thorough than it was
beneficent. His thought for the keepers was continual.... When a keeper
was sick, he lent him his horse and sent him mutton and brandy from
the ship.... They dwelt, many of them, in uninhabited isles or desert
forelands, totally cut off from shops.
"No servant of the Northern Lights came to Edinburgh but he was
entertained at Baxter Place. There at his own table my grandfather sat
down delightedly with his broad-spoken, homespun officers."
As he grew old his "medicine and delight" was his annual trip among
his lighthouses, but at length there came a time when this joy was taken
away from him and there came "the end of all his cruising; the
knowledge that he had looked the last on Sunburgh, and the wild crags
of Skye, and the Sound of Mull; that he was never again to hear the surf
break in Clashcarnock; never again to see lighthouse after lighthouse
(all younger than himself, and the more, part of his own device) open in
the hour of dusk their flower of fire, or the topaz and ruby interchange
on the summit of Bell Rock."
Throughout the rank and file of his men he was adored. "I have spoken
with many who knew him; I was his grandson, and their words may
very well have been words of flattery; but there was one thing that
could not be affected, and that was the look that came over their faces
at the name of Robert Stevenson."
Of his family of thirteen children, three of his sons became engineers.
Thomas Stevenson, the father of Robert Louis, like the others of his
family, contributed largely to lighthouse building and harbor
improvement, serving under his older brother, Allen, in building the
Skerryvore, one of the most famous deep-sea lights erected on a

treacherous reef off the west coast where, for more than forty years,
one wreck after another had occurred.
"From the navigator's point of view, the danger of