But the official extinguisher was not applied to the lights without a protest, an indignant protest, from many who, when they spoke of the utility of Killegrew’s work, knew of what they were speaking. Our naval sea-dogs, as fearless of the threats of wealthy traders and powerful corporations as they were of an enemy’s broadside, spoke up manfully for the Lizard lights. Sir William Monson, good seaman as ever sailed, who had won his laurels fighting the Spaniard, admitted that ‘in time of war’ such a light might be dangerous, but ‘in time of peace’ held it most necessary. ‘The art of navigation,’ he said, was not so certain that a man might assume to himself what land ‘he should fall withall, nor the time,’ and so ‘it were fit men should be furnished with as many helps as can be devised’; and he vouched for it that he himself, ‘in his return from the southward,’ had oftener ‘fallen with the Lizard’ than with any other point. Then, speaking as one who had too often tasted the weariness of a lengthy voyage, he continued that there was no man who had been long at sea, but would be glad to ‘make’ the land of his destination as quickly as he might; and, said he, men would be bolder to ‘bear in’ with the shore of England if they knew that ‘a light upon the Lizard could be seen by them seven or eight leagues off’—the distance he was informed Killegrew’s light had been seen at sea. So much for the ‘comfort’ of the light to vessels that had met with no mishap: how much more it would be appreciated in case of accident may, he says, be gauged by example of some wounded traveller on land, losing his way on a dark cold night, and espying a light in a cottage or hearing a ring of bells, by either of which he may be directed to a haven of rest. Then he tells of some of his personal adventures when off the Lizard Point in the Armada days, thirty years before. Many a good prize could then have been secured, and many a sound English ship saved, had light shone forth from that perilous headland. It had been said, too, that the light would help pirates in the Channel; that, says Monson, need not stand, for ‘I say the tenth of ten thousand ships that sail that way is not a pirate’; and he asks the king and his advisers to consider, ‘after that,’ if it were fit ‘to take away a light by which men receive so much good.’