Another ship that has to mount guard over a dangerous corner of the coast of England is that which indicates the cluster of rocks lying between Land’s End and the Scilly Isles, about sixteen miles off the mainland. For the most part the reef is submerged, but as the water goes down seven ugly scattered pinnacles thrust themselves into the air. They are terrible fangs with which to rip out the bottom of a steamer, and they have accomplished their fell work only too often. The number of the projections has given its name to the graveyard, which is known far and wide as the Seven Stones, though the mariner refers to them simply as The Stones. It would be difficult to say offhand which has claimed the greater number of victims from the mercantile marine--the sucking, glue-like sands of the Goodwins, or the splitting granite teeth of the Seven Stones; they run a close race for ill-fame. The latter lie right in the path of vessels rounding the western toe of England, and the sea-bed on all sides of them is littered with the shivered timbers of wooden sailing-ships, the splintered iron and steel of steamers, and the bones of scores of unfortunate passengers and crews. Although a light of 12,000 candle-power strives to warn the seafarer, now and again there is a miscalculation, and the intimation is conveyed to the mainland: “Ship and all hands lost.” It was in 1841, owing to the frequency and severity of the disasters at this spot, that Trinity House decided to guard it with a lightship. A lighthouse would be preferable, but there is such small foothold for the engineer, and the position is so fearfully exposed, that the erection of a masonry tower would prove a costly and tedious enterprise. So the only feasible alternative was adopted, and the vessel is kept abreast of modern developments in this phase of coast lighting. Lying as it does in a somewhat narrow channel, yet open to the full roll of the terrible westerly gales, it meets the Atlantic thundering through this constricted passage with awe-inspiring violence. It has often suffered greatly from the fury of the sea. Once a wave tumbled aboard, crashed a man against the pump, knocked him half senseless; picked up the lifeboat and threw it against the deck-house, and in so doing caught another member of the crew, mauling his thigh badly in passing. Two out of the seven men forming the crew were thus put _hors de combat_ by a single wave. The taut little vessel rides in 40 fathoms of water, about one and a half miles eastward of the danger spot, as even a lightship must not be moored too closely to a ridge, or she herself would incur the risk of being pounded to fragments.