This paper proposes to improve the safety of breakwaters by two important changes in the philosophy of design. When hydraulic model testing is used as a design tool the authors propose to reduce the specific gravity of the model breakwater to introduce a factor of safety in the prototype. They also recommend that the concept of testing for stability with the once in 50 year or once in 100 year wave should be replaced by a more rigorous statistical analysis to determine a design wave which has a probability of exceedence of no more than 5% in the lifetime of the structure.