In a record dated June 21, 1588, the month before the Spanish Armada was sighted in the English Channel, a list is given of the beacons in the East Riding, and instructions as to when they should be lighted, and what action should be taken when the warning was seen. It says briefly: ‘Flambrough, three beacons uppon the sea cost, takinge lighte from Bridlington, and geving lighte to Rudstone.’ There is no reference to any tower, and the beacons everywhere seem merely to have been bonfires ready for lighting, watched every day by two, and every night by three ‘honest house-holders ... above the age of thirty years.’ The old tower would appear, therefore, to have been put up as a lighthouse. If this is a correct supposition, however, the dangers of the headland to shipping must have been recognized as exceedingly great several centuries ago. A light could not have failed to have been a boon to mariners, and its maintenance would have been a matter of importance to all who owned ships; and yet, if this old tower ever held a lantern, the hiatus between the last night when it glowed on the headland, and the erection of the present lighthouse is so great that no one seems to be able to state definitely for what purpose the early structure came into existence. Year after year when night fell the cliffs were shrouded in blackness, with the direful result that between 1770 and 1806 one hundred and seventy-four ships were wrecked or lost on or near the promontory. It remained for a benevolent-minded customs officer of Bridlington--a Mr. Milne--to suggest the building of a lighthouse to the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, with the result that since December 6, 1806, a powerful light has every night flashed on Flamborough Head. The immediate result was that in the first seven years of its beneficent work no vessel was ‘lost on that station when the lights could be seen.’ The strangest fact concerning the affair is that no one appears to have taken advantage of the old tower--at least, as a temporary expedient--although it stood there manifestly for that purpose, stoutly resisting all the gales, as it continues to do, although more than a century has elapsed. One night, a good many years ago, when the glass of the lantern was thinner than now, the light was extinguished for a few minutes during a gale. A teal duck, which has a very rapid flight, came right through a pane of glass, being nearly cut in two, and leaving a hole for the wind to bluster through at the same moment. The derivation of the name Flamborough has been conclusively shown to have nothing at all to do with the English word ‘flame,’ being possibly a corruption of _Fleinn_, a Norse surname, and _borg_ or _burgh_, meaning a castle. In Domesday it is spelt ‘Flaneburg,’ and _flane_ is the Norse for an arrow or sword.