Sunday 18 August 2013

RLS and Shetland

Robert Louis Stevenson is connected with Shetland in a number of interesting ways. Orkney and Shetland were the destination of his first sea voyage in 1869. He travelled there with his father (a renowned engineer) on a tour of inspection of the many lighthouses he had built in the islands. The most spectacular of these being on Muckle Flugga, a rocky outcrop off the wild north shore of Unst, the most northerly island of the Shetlands.

RLS was eighteen and his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become a lighthouse engineer. He trained for this career for some months, but then went on to study Law at Edinburgh University. Here he began to write and gained his first publications. Towards the end of his life he wrote a series of essays about this early part of his life, explaining that he enjoyed the outdoor adventure part of being an engineer but not the office-bound majority of the work.

RLS was a prolific travel and adventure writer. And despite always being in poor health, he managed a great many adventurous journeys in his short life: travelling by canoe, donkey, train and boat across Europe, America, the Pacific and Australasia. He ended up living in Samoa and died there aged 44 years.

After publishing many articles and essays, his first major success was 'Treasure Island'. This work was started in 1881 and first serialised in a childrens magazine under the pseudonym Captain George North. The manuscript was revised and published as a book under his own name in 1883. RLS's map of Treasure Island bears a strong resemblance to Unst, the most northerly of the Shetlands.

I still have my copy of this book, given to me as a present on my seventh birthday.



The Sea Dog

 
I'm a plain man
 
been where it's hot as pitch
 
and colder than winter frost
 
huge sea tossing the fore-deck
 
ropes and mainsails thrumming
 
nor-easterly cutting yer bones,
 
many's the shipmate never come back
 
left under stones in a cove
 
wreck-wood across the grave -
 
skerries groaning, gulls screaming
 
black crags cleaving the surf.


I talks square I do
 
none can tell why he picked it
 
the Cap'n always a careful man
 
atop the cliff with his spyglass
 
no fields, not a tree
 
nary a lubber on the land
 
and us hauling the sea-chests after
 
cursing the wind and sleet.


Buried 'em?
                         I reckon us did
 
The map?
                         I won't peach
 
Another?
                         Thank'ee kindly
 
Rum...
                         it's been meat and drink
 
man and wife to me.


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