Men-o'-war, one of them lying at anchor, off Sheerness near the Nore lightship

Throughout the seventeenth century and beyond, the Royal Navy's most important anchorage was the Nore. The Nore itself was a sandbank in the Thames estuary, located off the entrance to the River Medway, and warships anchored there could protect not only London but also the vital naval dockyard facilities at Chatham established by Henry VIII and greatly enlarged by both Elizabeth I and Charles II. As an aid to navigation, it was proposed to station a lightship at the Nore as early as 1623 but at that time, and again in 1670, the proposals were treated with contempt by Trinity House which did not finally reverse its earlier somewhat perverse decisions until 1732 when the first such vessel was positioned.