HMS Argyll hit the reef in heavy weather in 1915 while hurrying to re-join the fleet after a refit. The lighthouse had been blacked out but requests from the navy for the light to be lit failed to get through and she was 8 miles off course when the lookout saw the lighthouse dead ahead, too late to avoid disaster. Argyll was destroyed by the navy when it became obvious that she could not be salvaged. She is the only major ship to be lost on the reef in the last two hundred years compared to 70 in the two years before the lighthouse was built.