The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [67]
As with Robert’s work on Regent Road in Edinburgh, the Hutcheson Bridge was a prestigious commission, designed both as a replacement for a rickety predecessor and as a sign of Glasgow’s industrial wealth. David was employed to help the masons and the foremen and was expected to carry out heavy manual work as well as drawing and planning. Robert’s long training ensured that all his apprentices, particularly his sons, would learn the harder side of engineering. Not only were they expected to endure the long nights in cold lodgings or tedious days wetted with salt spray, they were also expected to be able to lift stones, carry water or lay foundations. Above all, as future managers of men, they were expected to look to the comfort and wellbeing of others before they looked after their own. Robert’s policy paid useful dividends; by the end of the works on Stirling Bridge, the workmen had watched David change from his distant position as the chief engineer’s son into a colleague who had rolled up his sleeves and laboured as hard as they had. Having earned their respect, they paid him back in trust. When Robert arrived to key the last stone of the bridge – with all the customary flag-waving, chain-wearing, speech-making ceremony of Robert’s grandest works – David found himself elevated to the place of honorary team-mate. ‘At six the workmen sat down to dinner in the open air,’ he wrote excitedly, ‘after which there was dancing to the bag-pipe. Mr Ritson and I were seized by a deputation from the men and carried shoulder high from the town across the service bridge to the green on which they were dancing where we were loudly cheered by the men and three or four hundred spectators.’
Part of his summer duties included work on the new road to Kintyre lighthouse. Out there on the gristly spit of land overlooking the Ulster coast, David also learned the isolation of lighthouse work. The light at Kintyre was one of the first to be constructed by the NLB back in the 1780s on a remote patch of moorland fifteen miles from Campbeltown. The light was halfway down a steep cliff which was inaccessible to boats and all materials, and supplies for the light had to be brought on horseback along a route snared with spating burns and hidden potholes. The road had been necessary for some time but, like much of the less urgent lighthouse work, it had been shelved until money permitted. David was charged with supervising much of the construction work, the laying of durable foundations and the purchase of stone and materials.
David wrote occasionally to his mother, confessing he was lonely. His lodgings were damp and uncomfortable, the workmen grumpy and he longed to be home. David did not admit his fears to his father. Robert, it was clear, was not interested in self-doubt and would have been furious if any of his children had confessed to feeling inadequate. ‘I am coming on here very well,’ wrote David cheerily to his father in August 1832. ‘I have been levelling and surveying and also attending the road works and wishing myself sometimes with the spade, sometimes breaking stones and sometimes quarrying!!’ The only hint that David was not entirely happy came in a final aside. ‘I was glad to hear of Bob’s safe arrival [in Edinburgh] – he will be with you before this reaches you. Give him my compliments and tell him I have been dreaming about him every night for the last week or 10 days. I am wearying to see him…I hope to hear from you soon – let me know how long I am likely to stay here – I have been here four weeks already.’ To make matters worse, he found himself in the middle of an outbreak of cholera. One of the workmen suddenly sickened