The Little Post in the Water that fishing boats use!!

[brokencross]

Have not been to Wick for yonks, but can anyone tell me if the little flag, post thing, is still there on the end of the rocks near the trinkie,.........and was the breakwater that was being built there wher the flag is, actually the plan and design of a Mr Stevenson, a relative of Robert Louis Stevenson, or has my dad being telling me lies.

[The Godfather]

The 'Flaggy' was washed away last year and after a boat bumped into it the replaced it with a nice new yellow one.

It was Stevenson's father that built the breakwater. I think it drove him insane or something because it was the only thing he ever built that didnt work.

I heard that Rober Stevenson wrote Tresure Island while staying in Wick. Apparently he hated it here.

[brandy]

hiya
this is an excert from a writing about his fathers life concerning wick..
Of shore lights, the two brothers last named erected no fewer than twenty- seven; of beacons, (4) about twenty-five. Many harbours were successfully carried out: one, the harbour of Wick, the chief disaster of my father's life, was a failure; the sea proved too strong for man's arts; and after expedients hitherto unthought of, and on a scale hyper-cyclopean, the work must be deserted, and now stands a ruin in that bleak, God-forsaken bay, ten miles from John- o'-Groat's. In the improvement of rivers the brothers were likewise in a large way of practice over both England and Scotland, nor had any British engineer anything approaching their experience.

[George Brims]

There is a great book about the whole Stevenson family, called, "The Lighthouse Stevensons", by Bella Bathurst. They were a dynasty of civil engineers, but young Robert L, being a sickly kind of bloke, didn't take to it (he hated Week!) and took to writing instead. He also took himself off to the islands of the Pacific, seeing as they are a wee bit warmer.

[golach]

Shows he wissna daft eh?
Golach