But before the cancelling he had parted with any rights he possessed under his general patent with regard to the lightships at the Nore and at one or two other points, and in 1732, the purchaser, David Avery, placed a lightship at the east end of the Nore Sands. After circulating in shipping circles very glowing accounts of the benefits which this light would yield to navigation, he began to ask for his tolls, and by a little judicious dealing with the Trinity House he managed to get that body on his side in doing so. This is what he did. He arranged that the Trinity House should itself apply for a new patent from the crown—not in general words, but simply for a lightship at the Nore—and that he should take a lease of this patent, when granted, for a term of sixty-one years at a yearly rent of £100. When we remember what the traffic in and out of the Thames was, even in 1730, we shall see that Avery must have made a good profit on the £100 a year he paid the Trinity House. [Illustration: MODEL OF A LIGHTSHIP BUILT IN 1790. (_From the Trinity House Museum._)] The lightship at the Nore turned out fairly successful. Of course the arrangements for securing her in her position were of a very primitive type. Even now, with the strongest of cables and anchors, a lightship will sometimes break away from her moorings and scud before the gale. That is why the United States Government is replacing lightships by pile-lighthouses wherever the thing can be done. But in 1732 these breakings-away were far more frequent, and the first lightship at the Nore broke her moorings twice in three months of that year. As a consequence, the number of lightships around the English coast did not rapidly multiply. However, every few years saw some improvement in the anchoring arrangements of these vessels, and the benefit, the utility, of lightships—when once they could be trusted to keep their positions—became more and more apparent. To-day we have between forty and fifty of them round the coast of England. The lighting arrangements on lightships were also, at first, very rude and unsatisfactory. Small lanterns—each containing a cluster of tiny candles that needed to be constantly replenished—were suspended from the yardarm of the vessel’s mast, and these, on a gusty night, were often blown out, and occasionally blown bodily away. Yet such arrangements were not altered till early in the present century, when Robert Stephenson invented the form of lantern at present used, which surrounds the mast of the lightship. Inside this lantern is a circular frame, on which are fixed Argand lamps with reflectors, and each light and each reflector swings, by means of gimbals, so that, let the lightship roll or plunge as she may, the light is always steady and kept perpendicular by its own weight.