FIVE FACTS ABOUT RobertStevenson, lighthouse engineer
Every week we’ll highlight famous Glaswegians
1
BORN in Glasgow in 1772, Robert Stevenson was educated at a charity school after his father Alan, a partner in a West Indies sugar trading house in the city, died of an epidemic fever. His uncle died too, from the same disease - leaving his mother, Jean, in financial dire straits.
2
Robert and his mother moved to Edinburgh when he was 15, where she remarried Thomas Smith, a mechanic. Robert worked as an assistant to Thomas and at the age of just 19, he was entrusted with the supervision of the erection of a lighthouse on the island of Little Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde.
3
He wanted to study too, and attended lectures in mathematics and physical sciences at the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow and moral philosophy, logic and agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. (He did not take a degree, however, having a poor (for the time) knowledge of Latin, and none of Greek.)
4
In 1797 he was appointed engineer to the Lighthouse Board and he served for nearly 50 years during which he designed and oversaw the construction and later improvement of numerous lighthouses and bridges, including the construction of the Hutcheson Bridge in Glasgow. His most famous work was at Bell Rock Lighthouse, a long and hazardous scheme which placed him and his colleagues in danger on several occasions. Returning from the Orkney Islands in 1794 on the sloop Elizabeth of Stromness, he was – luckily – rowed ashore when the boat became becalmed off Kinnaird Head. Later, the ship was later driven back by a gale to Orkney, and there foundered losing all on board.
5
In 1815, Robert was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which in 1970 founded Stevenson College. In 2016 he was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.