MARITIME HISTORY 



lease expired in 1826. By that time Parliament was giving close attention to these extraordinary- 

 bounties of tens of thousands of pounds to private individuals for which very indifferent service was 

 rendered in return. For 1823-5 Lord Braybrooke's net profits on Winterton and Orfordness, the 

 two still being held together, were 13,414 a year, 1 and a parliamentary committee of 1822 had 

 * recommended that as these leases expired the lighthouses should be transferred to the Trinity 

 House. Therefore in 1826 the Treasury at first refused to renew Lord Braybrooke's lease, but 

 eventually, when his lordship pleaded family difficulties of various kinds, he obtained a renewal for 

 twenty-one years from 1828, nominally to allow him time for settlement. On this the committee 

 of 1834 drily remarked that they could not find an 'adequate explanation 1 of the favour shown to 

 Lord Braybrooke, and that the renewals at Orfordness and other places after the reports of the 

 committees of 1822 and 1824 had been 'highly objectionable and improper.' If there was no 

 explanation that would bear inquiry the interpretation of the Treasury complaisance was no doubt 

 perfectly well understood by the committee; The tolls were reduced one-half by the lease of 1828, 

 and half the profits were reserved for the crown. The Act of 6 and 7 Will. IV, c. 79, s. 42 vested 

 all the English lights in the Trinity House, with power to purchase those in private hands ; Lord 

 Braybrooke's remaining term was bought I January, 1837, for 37,896, the interest of the crown 

 in Orfordness and Winterton being valued at 108,041, which the Trinity House also had to pay. J 

 Both lights at Orfordness were lit with oil in 1793, and the high lighthouse, or perhaps both, were 

 rebuilt in the same year, but not in the same relative position. 3 Owing to the encroachments of 

 the sea the low lighthouse had to be abandoned in August, 1888,* and since then the two lights 

 have been shown from different heights in the same tower. 



Pakefield lighthouse, intended to show the channel between the Newcome and Barnard Sands, 

 was first lit 15 May, 1832, no tolls being charged for it ; 5 since 1897 it has been replaced by an 

 iron hut on the cliff south of Pakefield. The first Landguard light consisted of a lamp placed in a 

 window of the barracks on I October, 1 848, and this was transferred to a wooden frame building 

 at the point in 1868 ; the jetty light was established in 1878, and the beacon lights in 1896. 

 Felixstowe (Dock) south pier light was established in 1877, the north pier in 1896, the promenade 

 pier 1905 ; Shotley pier 1894; Cork lightship 1844; Shipwash lightship 1837, connected by 

 telegraph with the shore 1894 ; the permanent lighthouse in the centre of the town at South wold 

 was established in 1890, a temporary light in the town having been used since 1888, as well as 

 the East Cliff lights, established in 1881 ; the pier light at Southwold was first shown in 1900 ; 8 

 Lowestoft north and south piers 1847, j ett y extension 1898, Claremont pier, 1903 ; Gabbard 

 lightship 1888; Gorton lightship 1862, replacing the Stanford light-vessel of 1815 ; Gorleston south 

 pier upper light 1852, lower light 1887. 



The early history of beacons, buoys, and seamarks is obscure. The last, in the shape of church 

 towers and clumps of trees in prominent positions, are of course the first in point of time, and 

 Leland notices that the tower of St. Nicholas, Gorleston, was a seamark. For several of the counties 

 there are sixteenth-century grants of beaconage and buoyage to private individuals, but none is 

 known for Suffolk. Beacons, and seamarks generally, were under the control of the Lord Admiral 

 until 1594, when they were transferred altogether to the Trinity House, and by 8 Eliz. cap. 13, 

 which had given the Trinity House modified powers, anyone taking down a steeple, tree, or other 

 known seamark, was liable to a fine of 100, or to outlawry if he did not possess so much. On a 

 coast so constantly traversed as that of Suffolk, the church towers must have been seamarks as soon 

 as erected, and in all sailing directions nearly every one that can be observed from the sea is used as 

 a guide in navigation. The havens also must have had beacons put up by the inhabitants to lead 

 through the fairways, but the earliest known by precise date is that at Bawdsey, which is referred to 

 in an Admiralty suit of I552. 7 The brick tower used as a seamark, now known as Bawdsey beacon, 

 is not earlier than the beginning of the nineteenth century ; it was rebuilt in 1831. A sixteenth- 

 century map shows two timber beacons, or seamarks, at Aldeburgh fitted with lanterns for use at 

 nights although such use was probably only occasional. 8 Two harbour beacons at Woodbridge Haven 

 were advertised in the London Gazette of January, 1683-4, and there was a seamark on Eye Cliff 

 at Southwold.* Others were in position at Pakefield and Felixstowe before 1750, but have prob- 

 ably a much greater antiquity than that date connotes. Two fairway beacons at Landguard 

 were placed in 1857, an( ^ two more at Woodbridge in 1859. Orford Castle was certainly used as 



1 Par/. Papers (1834), xii, p. xlvi. At this date there were fourteen lights in the hands of private 

 persons who received from them very nearly as much as the Trinity House obtained from the fifty-five 

 under its control. 



1 Ibid. (1845), vs., 6. ' Ibid. (1861), xxv, 404. They were 1,439 yds. apart. 



4 Naut. Mag. Sept. 1888 ; Adm. List of Lights, 1889. 



5 Par!. Papers (1834), xii, 334. 



* Naut. Mag. Oct. 1890 ; May, 1898 ; Admir. List of Lights, under dates. 



7 Admir. Ct. Exam, vi, 29 April, 1552. This may possibly have been a seamark. 



6 Cott. MSS. Aug. I, i, 64. ' Gardner, Hist. Account of Duntvick, 188. 



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