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By Root 773 0

to nepotism was straightforward; he encouraged it. The sons of the Bell Rock workmen were now looking for jobs and were welcomed in the Stevenson workshops. Much of the success of Robert’s apprenticeships was due to his gift for self-advertisement. But much of it was also due to the gathering prestige of engineering itself. The well-publicised successes of the early pioneers – Telford, Rennie, Smeaton – had allowed the next generation to flourish. By now, many of the engineers were not just aware of each other’s existence, but drew on each other’s expertise. Networks were established, correspondence exchanged, scientific writings mused over. Robert could now draw on other experts’ knowledge to produce solutions to many of the most pressing technological problems. This small self-enclosed community of iron and steam brought its own cameraderie. The Stevensons, first Robert and then his sons, corresponded with almost all the major names in British Victorian engineering, including Telford, Stephenson, Faraday and Watt. Robert met Thomas Telford briefly in 1826 while working on the Annan bridge, and later despatched his eldest son, Alan, to serve a brief road-building apprenticeship with the Telford & Walker firm.

He was particularly effusive over his connection with George Stephenson, Rocket scientist. While developing the first of his locomotives, Stephenson wrote frequently to Robert on the subject of railways. Both were interested in the practicalities of rail: what was the ideal gauge, what was the maximum gradient, what were the benefits of steam versus horses. Robert was so overcome by their possibilities that he believed that many roads would eventually become redundant or be replaced with cast iron tracks. ‘It will be found an immense improvement upon the Common Road and also the Tram or wooden railway,’ he wrote in a letter to a friend in 1818. ‘It is not only intimately connected with Inland navigation and augmented with it; but will be found as it becomes more perfect still to add to the resources of the Miner while every progressive step must advance the immediate interest of the Agriculturalist, the Merchant and the Mariner and in short of the community at large.’ Stephenson welcomed his interest, and gratefully confided to Robert in 1821 that ‘I know you have been at more trouble than any man I know of in searching for the utility of railways.’ In 1822, Robert tried to buy shares in the Liverpool to Manchester railway, but found to his disappointment that they had all been sold. Instead, he contented himself with a tour of possible new sites for railways, and in sending Stephenson peremptory letters.

Similarly, Robert kept in touch with James Watt, then working on prototype steam-driven passenger ships in Glasgow. The correspondence was brief but richly typical. Robert, as usual, spent much of it soliciting for business. While drawing up plans for the Edinburgh-Glasgow railway, it had occurred to Robert that there might be a satisfactory bargain to be struck between Watt’s enterprise, the railway and a new harbour Robert was building at Granton. ‘It appears,’ he wrote in an 1836 letter, ‘to be of much consequence to your Steam Packet establishment between this and London that the Edinburgh and Glasgow should come to Granton and that it should be brought by the most easy line of draught…I have heard that you are about to build another ship – if you think well of it, it would tend to bring Granton Pier into much notice and be a high compliment to His Grace were the company to name her “The Granton”.’ Watt, sensibly, chose to ignore Robert’s suggestion and picked both his own route and his own name. The setback did not in the least discourage Robert, who simply turned his attention elsewhere.

While Robert was busy pursuing his landbound enthusiasms, the business of the Northern Lights ticked steadily onwards. The NLB had now been given parliamentary authority to build lights where and when it considered them necessary without the need to gain London’s approval for each one. Robert had already planned many of the