The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [119]
The end, when it came, came fast. Four years after his retirement, David died. Two years later, in 1887, Thomas followed him. Despite their quarrels and their differences in character, the two brothers had made an exceptional team, with the absences in one complementing the strengths of the other. David had undoubtedly been the better suited of the two to engineering. Tom always remained a little out of balance with the formulae of day-to-day working practice. If such a thing exists, then David had been the perfect engineer, with cool judgement, a strong sense of vision and an intimate grasp of the interlocking worlds of architecture, design and science. The lighthouse that remains as his lasting testimony, Muckle Flugga, was built against his better judgement. It is a measure of his skill that the impossible lighthouse still stands almost 150 years later. And moreover it is through him that the third and fourth generations of Lighthouse Stevensons went on working the shores of Scotland long after he, Alan and Tom were dead. He and his sons were largely responsible for creating the NLB in its present format, streamlining the engineers’ duties, defining the different tasks and completing the transition from an ad-hoc enterprise to a professional organisation. Much of his work was unspectacular. It was built to be useful, not to win prizes. But he more than any of Robert’s sons ensured that the name and work of the Stevensons kept its shine.
Tom, as always, was an altogether more complex character. The indecisiveness of his youth, the later conservatism, the erratic enthusiasms and moods, the battles with men and oceans, the bitter dismissal of David’s sons, the quarrels and reconciliations with Louis, all give a picture of a man forever fighting his own contradictions. In his own way, he was, like Alan, a thwarted man. If Robert had been a little more generous towards writing and a little less dogmatic in his ambitions, it seems probable that Tom might have made himself into an academic or a teacher. He was well suited to specialisation, he possessed a strong didactic streak, and he was so passionate about his own interests that he was often in danger of neglecting the ordinary Stevenson business. He too made his mark. Dhu Heartach was his monument and Wick his epitaph. Inevitably, however, it is not for lighthouses or lenses or harbours or good works that Tom has been recognised, it is for the double-edged honour of having sired Louis.
The deaths of Tom and David meant a sea-change in the NLB work. Suddenly, the engineers’ department was no longer monopolised by Stevensons. Alan Brebner was now the senior partner, and work was increasingly contracted out to other firms. The work diversified from the usual business of building and maintaining lights to different refinements – foghorns, beacons, buoys and so on. The estrangement between Trinity House and the Commissioners also escalated. The Elder Brethren took a greater say in the workings of the NLB, vetoing new projects and arbitrating over those to be undertaken. Both the Commissioners and the Stevensons found their intervention exasperating, and relations sometimes deteriorated into open confrontation. As with Muckle Flugga, the Commissioners pointed out that conditions were different in Scotland and that local knowledge was essential. Increasing centralisation, they suggested, would only diminish the service the NLB provided. It was not always an argument that persuaded London. The skirmishes with the Elder Brethren and the Board of Trade (now the Department of Transport) continue to this day.
Yet despite the obstacles, the lights kept on being built. Fidra, Oxcar, Ailsa Craig, Fair Isle, Helliar Holm, Sule Skerry, Stroma, Tod Head, Noup Head, Tiumpan Head, Killantringan, Hyskeir,