rmada
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 householders ... 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 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.

At the point where the chalk cliffs disappear and the low coast of
Holderness begins, we come to the exceedingly popular watering-place of
Bridlington. At one time the town was quite separate from the quay, and
even now there are two towns--the solemn and serious, almost Quakerish,
place inland, and the e