Excerpt from The Wonders of Salvage That point of light which meant SO much to him was the beam of a lighthouse, one of the many en circling our coast. All round our Shores they keep sentinel night after night, through summer calm and winter blizzard, waking to life as daylight fades and dying as dawn steals over the seas. These lights, which the city dweller on a brief visit to the sea watches with such interest, are the friends of all who go down to the sea in ships. Our coasts are profoundly treacherous. Rocks, shoals and quicksands abound everywhere, and are mostly marked with lighthouses, lightships and buoys which in the aggregate have cost millions of pounds. No expense has been spared to indicate these hidden dangers and make our seas safe for Shipping. Yet, in spite of all that human foresight can suggest, wrecks still occur. Gales spring up and take their toll fogs steal on and drive Ships blindly to their doom machinery breaks down and allows the seas to hurl the helpless craft upon the cruel rocks. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.