The Seven Stones are a reef located roughly halfway between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly. There has been a lightship anchored here since 1841, although in March 1967 this failed to prevent the Torrey Canyon running aground in broad daylight, causing a catastrophic oil slick along the Cornish coast. Classic British amateurism was displayed in botched attempts to ignite the spilling oil by dropping bombs (we kept missing the 974 foot long ship) and also in confused efforts to disperse the oil from beaches (it was often ploughed into the sand).
The current lightship is distinctively red-hulled and is now unmanned. Most of the former crew’s living space has subsequently been filled with buoyancy foam. Despite the thickness of the mooring chains, it has broken adrift on several occasions!
The Seven Stones is also the name of St Martin’s friendly pub. They were more than happy to let me completely monopolise a table and plug socket in the back corner of the pub, for most of last week.
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