History of lighthouses with demands, and to the loss of a number of ships, most notably the Dutch merchant ship Vreede in 1800 with the loss of 380 lives. After the reforms of the Lighthouse Act 1836, owners still managed to collect large dues, of which the largest were for the Smalls Lighthouse which collected £23,000 in 1852 and Trinity House was forced to spend over £1m in buying back leases, including £444,000 for the Skerries Lighthouse. The modern era of lighthouses began at the turn of the 18th century, as lighthouse construction boomed in lockstep with burgeoning levels of transatlantic commerce. Advances
History of lighthouses Tower of Hercules at A Coruña and the ruins of the Dover lighthouse in England give insight into construction; other evidence about lighthouses exists in depictions on coins and mosaics, of which many represent the lighthouse at Ostia. Coins from Alexandria, Ostia, and Laodicea in Syria also exist. While the evidence provides insight into the exterior structure of these structures, there are many gaps in evidence concerning less visible aspects of the structures. The remains at A Coruña and Dover help determine how each lighthouse structure functioned, though one must make some assumptions to determine how the structures beacons were