Towards a historical geography of marine engineering: D. & T. Stevenson, Wick harbour and the management of nature

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Highlights

  • Explores representations of the failure of Wick breakwater between 1868 and 1877.

  • Argues that engineers explained failure though the metaphor of conflict with nature.

  • Shows the importance of personal reputation in gaining support for engineering works.

  • Examines how local residents challenged claims to engineering expertise.

  • Argues for the importance of a geographical approach to the analysis of historical engineering.

Abstract

This paper addresses the complex relationship between natural forces and human attempts to control them in the nineteenth century with reference to a failed harbour development project undertaken in Wick in Caithness, Scotland between 1863 and 1877 by the British Fishery Society and the engineering firm D. & T. Stevenson. The paper highlights how modernist ideas that engineering could and should control nature for human ends were challenged and reshaped by geographically and historically specific discourses, including public duty and responsibility; adversarial nature and the danger of the sea; notions of failure, its meanings and its role in engineering; and the contested epistemological, reputational and experiential nature of expertise. Rather than see an historical geography of marine engineering as about successfully directing nature for human ends – shaping a new geography through technical progress – the paper calls for attention to the implications of failure. This emphasis complicates geographical narratives of progress, technological dominance and human control of the sea.

Section snippets

Histories and geographies of engineering

Where it has been studied geographically, a spatial approach to engineering has often focused on the comparison of either institutions or practices between nations.12

Private finance, public duty and national government

Nineteenth-century Wick and Pulteneytown supported a thriving herring fishery, attracting boats from as far as Lewis in the Western Isles for the summer and often seeing ‘every place blocked up’ in the harbour.23 Fishing was important to the Scottish economy, and in the nineteenth century especially plans were made to maximise profitability and promote the financial integration of Highland and northern Scotland with the rest of Britain.24

The force of the waves

Departing from what Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun describe as the ‘cultural myth that the ocean is outside and beyond history’, recent works have addressed the seas as cultural symbol, a space for the circulation of goods and people, and an element fundamental in the lives of many people.39

The failure of the breakwater

Failure is more complex than things not working or breaking down. For Graeme Gooday, the failure of technologies depends on the criteria applied, which could range from the technological to the cultural or economic.74 The labelling of failure is contingent, temporally and spatially, as it is dependent on the culture of the society within which the

Enduring reputation and the geography of disaster

The Stevenson firm had a stellar reputation in the mid nineteenth century. The sons of highly successful lighthouse engineer, Robert Stevenson, both brothers trained at the family firm.88 Unusually for engineers of their generation, they studied mathematics, natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Edinburgh while in training and maintained regular contact with its academic staff throughout their careers. Later in life, they became members of the

Conclusion

The association of Wick with extreme wave force was widely adopted in the aftermath of the breakwater project: Wick became a touchstone for failure and extreme nature. The project was used as a point of reference in discussion of the breakwater at Alderney in 1874 at the Institution of Civil Engineers.102 It was mentioned again in

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant number AH/R001588/1. I am grateful to Charles Withers, Chris Fleet and Alison Metcalfe for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. I also thank Gordon Reid and the archive staff at Nucleus: The Nuclear and Caithness Archive and the staff at the National Library of Scotland for their help and support.

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