Upwards of thirty signal stations have been established at various points on the coasts of the British Isles, where messages may be transmitted from passing vessels by means of the International Code; and there are twenty stations in various parts of the world, as widely apart as Aden, Ascension, Malta, St Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, and Skagen in Denmark, where communication may be effected by the same means. Many of these stations have direct telegraphic connection with London, so that shipowners may be kept acquainted with the movements of their vessels, and may also transmit instructions for the guidance of their captains. It is matter for wonder and regret, notwithstanding the existence of a carefully elaborated system of signals and a world-wide network of shore stations, that the use of the Signal Code is not in any sense compulsory on the part of shipowners. Considering the innumerable advantages which a speedy means of communication must afford to all concerned, it is with surprise that one learns, from a note prefixed to the official Maritime Directory for the past year, that ‘cases have been reported in which officers at the signal stations have hoisted the International Code Signals warning ships of danger, and the ships have been afterwards lost, from the inability of the masters to read the signals.’ This is a state of affairs which ought not to be permitted to continue in the interests of the men whose lives are at stake. Another and still more serious defect in a system which is admirable in many respects, is the total absence from the Code of any method of signalling at night. As we have seen, Her Majesty’s ships are provided with appliances for this purpose which are skilfully adapted to the end in view; but merchant vessels are absolutely without the power of communicating after darkness sets in. It is true that by private arrangement with the shore stations on several parts of the coast, the steamers belonging to the great Companies may by the use of certain lights indicate their names and the Company to which they belong; but this cannot, save in the most elementary sense, be regarded as a satisfactory method of communication. It is probable that the night signals in use in the Royal Navy are too complicated in character to permit of their being learned and worked efficiently without much more study and practice than can reasonably be expected from the master of a merchant vessel. Still, it ought to be within the power of science to suggest some plan for enabling a vessel to signal to ship or shore during the hours when the perils of the sea are rendered more terrible by darkness.
In these days, when our ocean highways and harbours are crowded with shipping, a collision between two of our large iron or steel vessels, which might happen at any time, would send one of them to the bottom in a few minutes. Two vessels, each going at a speed of twenty miles an hour, and sighting one another at two miles off, with this joint speed of forty miles an hour, would meet in about three minutes. Hence the importance of a ready and efficient method of signalling.
By the present system, red and green lights are placed on each side of the vessel, a green light on the starboard side, and a red light on the port side, with a board shutting off each light from the opposite side. An officer seeing a coloured light at a distance of two miles has no indication what course the vessel is steering. Hence the importance of the apparatus invented by The Right Hon. J. H. A. Macdonald, Q.C., M.P., Edinburgh, an Associate of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and Electricians, which he calls the Electric Holophote Course-indicator, for the prevention of collisions at sea.
By means of a powerful electric light, the approach of another vessel is indicated, and information is given at the same time as to what course she is on and what course she intends to hold to. The light is also useful for illuminating the water immediately before the ship, and is also valuable when passing down a river, through shoals, or close to a lee shore. The instrument consists of a strong reflector, with an arc light placed in the middle of it, which is affected by every movement of the helm. As long as the helm is amidships, the handle cannot be moved at all, but is held firm by two pegs. But if the helm is moved from amidships, an electric circuit is formed, which actuates an electro-magnet, and thereby removes one of the pegs. When the helm is ported, the reflector is set free by the removal of one of the pegs, so that by working the handle, the light can be swept from amidships over the starboard bow, and brought back again. If the helm be starboarded, the reflector is freed from the other peg, so that the light can be swept from amidships over the port bow and back again. But as this is a mere side-to-side movement, means are provided for giving more intelligible information, such as a driver gives when waving his hand to indicate his course, by a shutter connected with the reflector in such a way that when the beam has completed its side-movement, the shutter rises up and obscures the light, and does not drop again until the reflector has been turned back to its middle position. The shutter then falls down; and the light being again exposed, the process of sweeping round to starboard, screening, and bringing back to amidships, can be repeated as long as the helm remains at port. When the helm is starboarded, the light can be swept round to port in the same way. The light is immovable when the helm is amidships, and can be swept only over the starboard bow when the helm is ported, and only over the port bow when the helm is starboarded. In order to guard against the risk of the reflector being carelessly worked by not completing its sweep either way, the instrument is provided with two tell-tale bells, which will enable the officer on the bridge to check the working of the reflector.
In foggy weather, when the light would be ineffective, two steam whistles can be shunted into action by the reflector handle, one giving off a succession of short shrill notes, the other a succession of deep long notes, according as the helm is to starboard or port. This invention has been awarded a medal at three Exhibitions, including the Inventories; while Admiral Bedford Pim, one of the nautical jurors, has styled it an ‘excellent course indicator.’
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER IV.
It was a brilliant, cloudless, tropical day at Agualta Estate, Trinidad; and the cocoa-nut palms in front of the pretty, picturesque, low-roofed bungalow were waving gracefully in the light sea-breeze that blew fresh across the open cane-pieces from the distant horizon of the broad Atlantic. Most days, indeed, except during the rainy season, were brilliant enough in all conscience at beautiful Agualta: the sun blazed all day long in a uniform hazy-white sky, not blue, to be sure, as in a northern climate, but bluish and cloudless; and the sea shone below hazy-white, in the dim background, beyond the waving palm-trees, and the broad-leaved bananas, and the long stretch of bright-green cane-pieces that sloped down in endless succession towards the beach and the breakers. Agualta House itself was perched, West India fashion, on the topmost summit of a tall and lonely rocky peak, a projecting spur or shoulder from the main mass of the Trinidad mountains. They chose the very highest and most beautiful situations they could find for their houses, those old matter-of-fact West Indian planters, not so much out of a taste for scenery—for their mental horizon was for the most part bounded by rum and sugar—but because a hilltop was coolest and breeziest, and coolness is the one great practical desideratum in a West Indian residence. Still, the houses that they built on these airy heights incidentally enjoyed the most exquisite prospects; and Agualta itself was no exception to the general rule in this matter. From the front piazza you looked down upon a green ravine, crowded with tree-ferns and other graceful tropical vegetation; on either side, rocky peaks broke the middle distance with their jagged tors and precipitous needles; while far away beyond the cane-grown plain that nestled snugly in the hollow below, the sky-line of the Atlantic bounded the view, with a dozen sun-smit rocky islets basking like great floating whales upon the gray horizon. No lovelier view in the whole of luxuriant beautiful Trinidad than that from the creeper-covered front piazza of the white bungalow of old Agualta.
Through the midst of the ravine, the little river from which the estate took its Spanish name—curiously corrupted upon negro lips into the form of Wagwater—tumbled in white sheets of dashing foam between the green foliage ‘in cataract after cataract to the sea.’ Here and there, the overarching clumps of feathery bamboo hid its course for a hundred yards or so, as seen from the piazza; but every now and again it gleamed forth, white and conspicuous once more, as it tumbled headlong down its steep course over some rocky barrier. You could trace it throughout like a long line of light among all the tangled, glossy, dark-green foliage of that wild and overgrown tropical gully.
The Honourable James Hawthorn, owner of Agualta, was sitting out in a cane armchair, under the broad shadow of the great mango-tree on the grassy terrace in front of the piazza. A venerable gray-haired, gray-bearded man, with a calm, clear-cut, resolute face, the very counterpart of his son Edward’s, only grown some thirty years older, and sterner too, and more unbending.