ever achievable during spring tides; even then 'the sea was seldom smooth enough to admit of a footing on the rock'. The beacon was completed on 27 June 1843: a wrought iron mast of diameter standing some above mean high water springs and topped by a ball-shaped top-mark, wide (which had been reduced in size from 6 ft after heavy seas were observed to submerge the top of the mast). In October the following year the beacon was snapped off in a gale, leaving a stump (which was itself carried away, following a ship collision, before repairs could be effected). A replacement, high with a top-mark, was installed the following summer and remained in place until 1854, when it too was carried off in a storm. Another replacement was therefore erected, by James Douglass in the spring of 1856, but it too was destroyed in December that same year. Thereafter the decision was taken to mark the hazard with a buoy. Buoys There had been previous attempts to attach buoys, with the first led by the naval Lieutenant Hugh Goldsmith (nephew of the famous poet Oliver Goldsmith) aboard the cutter HMS Nimble in 1824. (After several unsuccessful attempts Lt Goldsmith and a number of his crew turned their attention to, and succeeded in toppling the famous rocking stone, Logan Rock from its precarious perch on the Treryn Dinas headland east of Porthcurno, much to the dismay of local people.) Buoys were also placed from time to time in the absence of the beacon. Douglass designed the first permanent Rundlestone bell buoy following the destruction of his 1856 beacon; it had a ball-shaped top-mark and the bell was struck by four clappers. Various buoys have since been attached, as in December 1880 when the local newspaper (The Cornishman) reported that the Trinity House vessel, Stella put into Penzance with about 30 tons of mooring-chain, etc. for the Sevenstones Lightship and the Rundlestone buoy. A second buoy was attached in June 1881 with a bell and four large iron balls which ran in grooves. As one side of the buoy was raised by a wave, the movement sent one of the balls against the bell. The buoy and the mooring costs was paid for by the blacksmith who designed it. People living at Tol-pedn and Porthgwarra were asked to listen for the two ″bell-buoys″ as a means to test the new buoy.