Everything about Robert Stevenson Civil Engineer totally explained
Robert Stevenson (8 June
1772–12 July
1850) was a
Scottish civil engineer and famed designer and builder of
lighthouses.
Early life
Stevenson was born in
Glasgow; his father was Alan Stevenson, a partner in a West India trading house in the city. He died of an epidemic fever on the island of
St. Christopher when Stevenson was an infant; at much the same time, Stevenson's uncle died of the same disease, leaving his widow, Jane Lillie, in straightened financial circumstances. As a result, Stevenson was educated as an infant at a charity school.
His mother intended Robert for the ministry and to this end sent him to the school of a famous linguist of the day, Mr. Macintyre. However, in Stevenson's fifteenth year, Jane Lillie married
Thomas Smith a tinsmith, lampmaker and ingenious mechanic who had in 1786 been appointed engineer to the newly formed
Northern Lighthouse Board.
Professional career
Stevenson served as Smith's assistant, and was sufficiently successful that at age 19 he was entrusted with the supervision of the erection of a lighthouse on the island of
Little Cumbrae in the
river Clyde. He devoted himself with determination to follow the profession of a civil engineer, and applied himself to the practice of surveying and architectural drawing and attended lectures in mathematics and physical sciences at the
Andersonian Institute at Glasgow. Study was interleaved with work - his next project was lighthouses on
Orkney. He made use of winter months to attend lectures in philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and natural history, as well as moral philosophy, logic and agriculture at the
University of Edinburgh. He didn't take a degree, however, having a poor (for the time) knowledge of Latin, and none of Greek.
In 1797 he was appointed engineer to the Lighthouse Board in succession to Smith; in 1799 he married Smith's eldest daughter Jean, who was also his stepsister, and in 1800 was adopted as Smith's business partner.
The most important work of Stevenson's life is the
Bell Rock Lighthouse, a scheme long in the gestation and then long and extremely hazardous in the construction. The involvement of
John Rennie as a consulting engineer in the project led to some contention for the credit upon the successful completion of the project; particularly between
Alan Stevenson, Robert's son, and
Sir John Rennie, son of the consulting engineer.
Samuel Smiles, the popular engineering author of the time, published an account taken from Rennie, which assisted in establishing his claim. History, and the Northern Lighthouse Board, give full credit to Stevenson.
Stevenson's work on the Bell Rock and elsewhere provided a fund of anecdotes of the danger in which he placed himself. Returning from the
Orkneys in 1794 on the sloop
Elizabeth of Stromness, he'd the good fortune to be rowed ashore when the
Elizabeth became becalmed off
Kinnaird Head; the ship was later driven back by a gale to Orkney, and there foundered losing all hands. On Bell Rock, which was covered by all but the lowest tide, he tells of an occasion when one of the crew boats drifted away leaving insufficient carrying capacity for the crew in the remaining boats; the situation was saved by the timely arrival of the Bell Rock pilot boat, on an errand to deliver mail to Stevenson.
Stevenson served for nearly fifty years as engineer to the Lighthouse Board, until 1843, during which time he designed and oversaw the construction and later improvement of numerous lighthouses. He innovated in the choice of light sources, mountings, reflector design, the use of
Fresnel lenses, and in rotation and shuttering systems providing lighthouses with individual signatures allowing them to be identified by seafarers. For this last innovation he was awarded a gold medal by the
William I of the Netherlands.
The period after
Waterloo and the end of the continental wars was a time of much improvement of the fabric of the country, and engineering skills were much in demand. Besides his work for the Northern Lighthouse Board, he acted as a consulting engineer on many occasions, and worked with Rennie,
Alexander Nimmo,
Thomas Telford,
William Walker and
William Cubitt. Projects included roads, bridges, harbours, canals and railways, and river navigations. He designed and oversaw the construction of the
Hutcheson Bridge in Glasgow, and the
Regent Bridge and approaches from the East to Edinburgh. He projected a number of canals and railways which were not built; and new and improved designs for bridges, some of which were later adopted and implemented by his successors. He invented the movable jib and balance cranes as necessary part of his lighthouse construction; and
George Stephenson acknowledged his lead in the selection of malleable rather than cast-iron rails for railways.
He was made a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815. He published an
Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse in 1824; a paper on the
North Sea, establishing by evidence that it was eroding the eastern coastline of the
United Kingdom, and that the great sandbanks were the spoil taken by the sea. He devised and tested the hypothesis that freshwater and saltwater at river mouths exist as separate and distinct streams. He contributed to the
Encyclopædia Britannica and the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and published in a number of the scientific journals of the day.
Three of Stevenson’s sons became engineers:
David,
Alan, and
Thomas; he also had a daughter, who assisted in writing and illustrating an account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse construction.
Robert Louis Stevenson was his grandson, via Thomas.
Stevenson died on the 12th July 1850 in
Edinburgh.
Memorials to Stevenson
Stevenson College, Edinburgh was founded in 1970, and was named after Robert Stevenson. For at least some of his life Robert Stevenson lived at 1 Baxter's Place, Edinburgh; a building that's now called Robert Stevenson House in his memory.
A biographical account of the professional accomplishments of Stevenson and his sons is:
- Bella Bathurst, The Lighthouse Stevensons, Harper Collins Publishers, 1999, ISBN 0-06-019427-8
Works by Robert Stevenson
Lighthouses
Bell Rock Lighthouse (1811)
Isle of May (1816)
Corsewall (1818)
Point of Ayre (1818)
Calf of Man (1818)
Sumburgh Head (1821)
Rinns of Islay (1825)
Buchan Ness (1827)
Cape Wrath (1828)
Tarbat Ness (1830)
Mull of Galloway (1830)
Dunnet Head (1831)
Girdle Ness (1833)
Barra Head (1833)
Lismore (1833)
Other
Annan Bridge
Hutcheson Bridge, Glasgow
Marykirk Bridge
The Melville Column, Edinburgh – commemorates Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville
Regent Bridge and the London road approaches to Edinburgh from the east.
Stirling New BridgeFurther Information
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