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 invention increased the luminosity of the lighthouse lamp by a factor of 4 and his system is still in common use. 36. http://ponceinlet.org/blog/florida-lighthouses/post.cfm/post/5804/history-of-lighthouses History of lighthouses </ref></ref> The history of lighthouses refers to the development of the use of towers, buildings, or other types of structure, as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Before the development of clearly defined ports, mariners were guided by fires built on hilltops. Since raising the fire would improve the visibility, placing the fire on a platform became a practice that led to the development of the lighthouse.