“Then, if you keep in range with the port gangway and the stem, there will be nothing in your way, will there?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“That is exactly the principle on which we
pilot a steamer or any other vessel. But sometimes the matter is much more complicated, and we have to take a dozen different ranges in going a dozen miles. Pilots learn all these ranges, and get their bearings from various objects on the shore. You can see the capstan; but we cannot see the obstructions in our way in sailing a vessel, for they are under water. They are all laid down on the chart, and we can learn our courses from that.”
“But isn’t there any thing on that reef to let you know where it is?” asked Dave Windsor.
“There is nothing on Quaker-Smith’s Reef, for it is out of the usual track of vessels. It is about a mile from the eastern shore of the lake. When the water is as low as it is now, this steamer would get aground on it. But at the entrance to harbors they put buoys, and also on rocks and shoal places in or near the usual track of vessels.”
“What sort of things are buoys?” asked Bob Swanton.
“Generally they are logs of wood, anchored to the bottom. These are called spar-buoys. Others are made of metal, hollow, and shaped like a couple of frustrums of cones joined at the big end.
These are can-buoys. There are other kinds, but you won’t find them in this lake.”
“Spar and can buoys. We can remember them,” added John Brattle.