tower. Every twenty
seconds the upper light flashes for one and a half seconds, being seen
in clear weather at a distance of seventeen nautical miles.

In the Middle Ages great fortunes were made on the shores on the
Humber. Sir William de la Pole was a merchant of remarkable enterprise,
and the most notable of those who traded at Ravenserodd. It was
probably owing to his great wealth that his son was made a
knight-banneret, and his grandson became Earl of Suffolk. Another of
the De la Poles was the first Mayor of Hull, and seems to have been no
less opulent than his brother, who lent large sums of money to Edward
III, and was in consequence appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer and
also presented with the Lordship of Holderness.

The story of Ravenser, and the later town of Ravenserodd, is told in a
number of early records, and from them we can see clearly what happened
in this corner of Yorkshire. Owing to a natural confusion from the many
different spellings of the two places, the fate of the prosperous port
of Ravenserodd has been lost in a haze of misconception. And this might
have continued if Mr. J. R. Boyle had not gone exhaustively into the
matter, bringing together all the references to the Ravensers which
have been discovered.

There seems little doubt that the first place called Ravenser was a
Danish settlement just within the Spurn Point, the name being a
compound of the raven of the Danish standard, and eyr or ore, meaning a
narrow strip of land between two waters. In an early Icelandic saga the
sailing of the defeated remnant of Harold Hardrada's army from
Ravenser, after the defeat of the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, is
mentioned in the lines:

'The King the swift ships with the flood
Set out, with the autumn approaching,
And sailed from the port, called Hrafnseyrr (the raven tongue of land).'

From this event of 1066 Ravenser must have remained a hamlet of small
consequence, for it is not heard of again for nearly two centuries, and
then only in connexion with the new Ravenser which had grown on a spit
of land gradually thrown up by the tide within the spoon-shaped ridge
of Spurn Head. On this new ground a vessel was wrecked some time in the
early part of the thirteenth century, and a certain man--the earliest
recorded Peggotty--converted it into a house, and even made it a
tavern, where he sold food and drink to mariners. Then three or four
houses were built near the adapted hull, and fo