If on the port tack you steer,
It is your duty to keep clear
Of every closehauled ship ahead,
No matter whether green or red.
But when upon your port is seen
A stranger's starboard light of green,
There's not so much for you to do,
For green to port keeps clear of you.
A ship which is being overtaken by another shall show from her stern to such last-mentioned ship a white light or a flare-up light. This rule was only adopted in 1884, but I saw it practically exemplified in the ship Rajah of Cochin in the year 1874. The Rajah was running down the Southeast trades one pitch dark night in April, homeward bound; I was in charge of the deck. We had studdingsails set on both sides, on the mainmast and foremast. Suddenly out of the darkness astern there loomed up the sails on the foremast of a big ship whose jibboom seemed to be right over the Rajah's stern. She carried no side lights, her skipper being probably of an economical turn of mind. I took the lighted lamp out of the binnacle, and jumping on the wheel gratings waved it as high as I could, at the same time yelling with all my might. I could hear the man on the lookout aboard the pursuing vessel roar out, and then came a clatter and a rattle of ropes and a flapping of sails as with her helm hard to port the ship that was pursuing us luffed out across our stern. She snapped off a few stunsail booms, but that was better than running us down. Capt. Sedgwick, who was in command of the Rajah, was awakened by the noise and came up from below in his pajamas. He quickly realized what a close shave his ship had experienced.