We spoke just now of the absence of good charts. It was Charles II who, being himself greatly interested in navigation and finding that there were no sea charts of the British Isles except such as were Dutch or copies of the Dutch--and very erroneous at that--gave a man named Greenville Collins command of a yacht for the purpose of making a sea survey, “in which service,” says Collins, “I spent seven years’ time.” James II, himself a great admiral, encouraged this work till its completion, and so good and accurate were the charts that they were in active use at any rate till the end of the eighteenth century. As to the lighting of the coast, this was still in a very primitive condition. The first navigation light in this country was that of the Roman Pharos at Dover, a day-mark which mariners still see to-day as they come bound up Channel. In monastic times probably St. Aldhelm’s (better known as St. Albans) Head showed a light to warn ships from the land, and it is also thought that there was a light at Flamborough[51] and in Flintshire. In 1685, Lowestoft, Dungeness, the North and South Forelands, Orfordness, Flamborough, Portland, Harwich, and the Isle of Man were all lighted by beacon fires of wood and coal. These coal fires continued in some of the lighthouses round our coast even till well into the reign of William IV. But the Argand lamp, which was invented during the reign of James II, gradually and surely took the place of the older-fashioned beacon. And if we may, whilst we are on the subject, anticipate a few years, we may add that though in William IV’s time lights were more numerous and the system of buoys was well established, yet lightships were practically non-existent. The first lightship dates from 1732, when Robert Hamblyn and David Avery established such a ship at the Nore.