Robert Louis Stevenson, the legendary 19th century Scottish author, is best known for fictional works like Treasure Island. Less well known: Stevenson came from a family that designed and built nearly 100 lighthouses. One of those lighthouses inspired the name of an Australian insurance brokerage.
“I spent six months trying to come up with a name,” said insurance industry veteran Stephen McCarthy (pictured above), as he reflected on 2007, the year he founded his brokerage.
“I knew that the name was very important for the journey that we were about to enter,” said Brisbane-based McCarthy during an interview with Insurance Business. “I really wanted to get my point across about the measurably different negotiation model.”
He said the story of Robert Stevenson, grandfather of the famous novelist, inspired him as a way of capturing what he was trying to convey.
“In about 1800, as a young engineer, he designed this lighthouse that’s on a reef that is underwater at high tide and out of the water at low tide,” said McCarthy.
He said for centuries the site – also known as Inchcape and located in the North Sea, 11 miles east of Scotland’s Firth of Tay – was notorious for shipwrecks.
Bell Rock, as it is more familiarly known, probably took its name from a bell that was placed there during the 1400s to warn ships. According to legend, the bell was stolen by a Dutch pirate.
“Then in 1799, Robert Stevenson was awarded the contract to design and build the lighthouse,” said McCarthy, who is managing director and founder of Bellrock Broking. John Rennie, another civil engineer, collaborated to some extent, on the design work.
McCarthy said Stevenson proposed new construction methods.
“There was an uproar at the time, the local establishment questioned even trusting Stevenson to do the job because he was a young man and this hadn’t been done before,” he said.
However, after delays and a false start, Stevenson and a team about 60 men built the 35-metre-high lighthouse between 1807 and 1810. At the time, according to maritime architecture experts, it was the tallest off-shore lighthouse in the world. Today, reports describe it as one of the oldest surviving lighthouses.
McCarthy said Bell Rock Lighthouse appeals to him as a symbol of forward thinking and using traditional ideas but thinking out of the box.
“So just having a crack and if it’s logical, run with it, give that idea a chance to flourish,” he said.
McCarthy said there’s another reason to like the name.
“I also like, in the Bell Rock name, the link to the Lutine Bell at Lloyd’s of London,” he said.
The Lloyd’s of London website tells the story of the 1799 shipwreck of the HMS Lutine – ironically the same year Stevenson won his lighthouse commission - as “perhaps the most famous maritime loss at Lloyd’s.” According to the website, the HMS Lutine was carrying “a vast sum” of gold, silver and possibly Dutch crown jewels when it was wrecked during a gale off the Dutch coast. Only one person survived out of 240 passengers and crew.
According to Lloyd’s, the insurance claim for the disaster was paid in full just two weeks after the tragedy.
“It was the Lutine that created Lloyd’s reputation for paying valid claims – and for having the financial wherewithal to withstand a loss of such significant proportions,” said the website.
Today, the salvaged ship’s bell hangs in the atrium of the Lloyd’s underwriting room.
McCarthy said the idea that when a claim happens, “there’s a call to arms” also appealed very strongly to him.
“It’s also a name that has a real punch,” he said. “Once I came up with that name, I was very happy and very motivated to take the business forward.”
McCarthy has an original relic from the lighthouse (lantern picture below courtesy of Stephen McCarthy).
“I have a lantern that was used back when they built the lighthouse,” he said. “It was a wedding present from my father in law - who was also a guru in insurance.”
His firm also commissioned an artist to do a painting of Bell Rock Lighthouse which is in the foyer of the Brisbane office.
You can find out about the “measurably different negotiation model” McCarthy mentioned in this article by watching this Insurance Business TV interview.
What’s the inspiration for the name of your insurance business? Please tell us below and why it resonates with you?
