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Updated: June 14, 2025
There are miles of net up there, trap and flight nets close by the side of the line. These nets are wide and strong; they run many furlongs without supports, so that an acrobat could easily turn a somersault on to one of these at a given spot without the slightest risk. He could study out the precise spot carefully beforehand there are lightships on the sands to act as guides.
Efforts were made to box the ship off by backing and swinging the yards and trimming the sails, but all to no purpose, and then flares and torches to summon help were lighted. These at once caught the notice of the look-out men on the lightships, and drew from those vessels the guns and rockets, the usual signals of distress.
Some of the lighthouses and lightships on our coasts already have these submarine bells in addition to their lights, and in bad weather the bells send out their messages to warn ships of their proximity to a danger point.
The English lightships fire guns to attract the attention of the lifeboat crew when shipwrecks take place in sight of the ships, but out of sight of the boats; and guns are used as signals of approaching floods at freshet times in various countries. Rockets.
Before daylight we were again under weigh, as we had numerous lighthouses and lightships to guide us; indeed, no river is more perfectly lighted than the Mersey, for numerous shoals lie at its entrance, and few rivers have so many vessels standing in and out at all hours. We counted no less than eight lights as we sailed along.
The rounded clouds still towered above them, making the river black with their deep shadows. A few lights twinkled across the waters. They were the lightships marking the middle bank of the Gironde, which is many miles wide at this spot and rendered dangerous by innumerable sandbanks. "In five minutes it will be upon us," said Jean. "You had better turn back."
Lightships are usually clumsy-looking, red-painted vessels, having one strong mast amidships, with a ball at the top, about six feet in diameter, made of light laths. This ball is a very conspicuous object, and clearly indicates a lightship to the passing vessel during the day. At night a huge lantern traverses on, and is hoisted to nearly the top of, the same mast.
Has a queer way of talkin' and walkin' yes, and thinkin'. He's put in the most of his life in out-of-the-way places, boat-fishin' all alone off on the cod banks, or attendin' to lobster pots way down in the South Channel, or aboard lightships two miles from nowhere. That's enough to make any man queer, bein' off by himself so.
Sometimes a hayrick on fire is mistaken for a vessel's appealing signal; sometimes the signals, of enormous and unnecessary size, which the French trawlers burn to each other at night around the Goodwins, set both the lightships and lifeboats all astray; and the coxswains of the lifeboats, both at Ramsgate and Deal, have to be on their guard against these delusive agencies.
And so we warped into harbour, through the boom and past the lightships, to join the crowd of transports and battle cruisers lying off this muddled city the city of wonderful colour, Alexandria. Scarlet-orange; Beetle-green, Flashing like a magic screen. Silken garment, 'Broidered hood; Richly woven gown; Flashing like a pantomime, In and out Aladdin's town.
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