In Great Britain the seafarer’s warning light followed the lines of those in vogue upon the older part of the Continent, consisting chiefly of wood and coal fires mounted on conspicuous lofty points around the coast. These braziers were maintained both by public and by private enterprise. Patents were granted to certain individuals for the upkeep of beacons in England and Scotland, and from time to time the holders of these rights came into conflict with the public authority which was created subsequently for the maintenance of various aids to navigation around the coasts. In England these monopolies were not extinguished until 1836, when the Brethren of Trinity House were empowered, by special Act of Parliament, to purchase the lights which had been provided both by the Crown and by private interests, so as to bring the control under one corporation. [Illustration: _Photo by permission of Messrs. Bullivant & Co., Ltd._ HOW THE BEACHY HEAD LIGHTHOUSE WAS BUILT. To facilitate erection a cableway was stretched between the top of Beachy Head and a staging placed beside the site of the tower in the water. A stone is being sent down.] The _chauffer_, however, was an unsatisfactory as well as an expensive type of beacon. Some of these grates consumed as many as 400 tons of coal per annum--more than a ton of coal per night--in addition to vast quantities of wood. Being completely exposed, they were subject to the caprices of the wind. When a gale blew off the land, the light on the sea side was of great relative brilliancy; but when off the water, the side of the fire facing the sea would be quite black, whereas on the landward side the fire bars were almost melting under the fierce heat generated by the intense draughts. This was the greater drawback, because it was, of course, precisely when the wind was making a lee shore below the beacon that the more brilliant light was required. When the Pilgrim Fathers made their historic trek to the United States, they took Old World ideas with them. The first light provided on the North American continent was at Point Allerton, the most prominent headland near the entrance to Boston Harbour, where 400 boatloads of stone were devoted to the erection of a tower capped with a large basket of iron in which “fier-bales of pitch and ocum” were burned. This beacon served the purpose of guiding navigators into and out of Boston Harbour for several years. When, however, the shortcomings of the exposed fire were realized, attempts were made to evolve a lighting system, which does in reality constitute the foundation of modern practice. But the beacon fire held its own for many years after the new principle came into vogue, the last coal fire in England being the Flat Holme Light, in the Bristol Channel, which was not superseded until 1822.