28 NORTH SEA FISHERS AND FIGHTERS 



little that is reliable is to be learned. The structure was 

 doubtless at one time a look-out place ; but it does not 

 appear to have been used as a beacon. 



The constant traffic up and down the North Sea 

 caused some of the earliest of all efforts to light our 

 shores to be made on the eastern border of Great 

 Britain. Long before lighthouses were built there were 

 in use fire beacons and coal beacons, braziers in which 

 wood or coal was burnt, and which served their purpose 

 well enough in good clear weather, but were useless in 

 bad seasons. An open grate in which coal had to be 

 kept burning by a man with a pair of bellows was not 

 a promising contrivance, especially in a winter snow- 

 storm ; yet such beacons were in use on the east coast 

 so lately that only half a century ago there was still living 

 the man who tended the coal beacon at Harwich. A 

 coal fire was shown at Cromer from 1719 to 1792 ; but 

 primitive lighting structures were employed at various 

 places a century earlier, and doubtless the famous Boston 

 " Stump " in days gone by did duty as a light for manners, 

 just as in the daytime the tower served as a landmark 

 for mariners. The Lowestoft Lower or Beach Light- 

 house was first illuminated in 1608, and was lit with oil 

 in 1730. 



The long stretch of dangerous east coast necessitates 

 the employment of a great number of lighthouses and 

 light vessels, most of the latter being stationed between 

 Cromer and Lowestoft. Many of these craft are moored 

 in positions in which they endure the full force of North 

 Sea gales and the consequent discomfort of a particularly 

 violent and unpleasant motion ; indeed, the master of a 

 former Hull light vessel, who had crossed the Atlantic 



