NAVIGATING IN THICK WEATHER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1930, Page 6

NAVIGATING IN THICK WEATHER.

In reference to the loss of the Manuka I would like to state my experience in steamer service on the West American Coast. Besides serving with the Union Company, I put in ten years in ships on the British Columbia coast. These fast ships carryinalls and human freight into U.S.A. and Vancouver and Victoria, B.C. In one ship we used to run 19£ to 20 knots all the time through fog, _ snow storms and all conditions, catching trains both ends. The skippers run full lick and blow the whistle every five or ten seconds. Getting an "echo" on the whistle gives them their true position in narrow waters. All lighthouses .on this coast are equipped with gasoline engines and air compressors, and when foggy . the engine pumps up to a certain pressure and a valve is tripped and the foghorn operates. Each lighthouse has its peculiar note of two blasts and can be picked up at a £reat distance. In ma.king a landing at the docks a small foghorn is operated on the dock by an attendant and the skipper gives a blast now and again as lie approaches the pier and the echo returns and gives him the distance lie has to go. A six-second echo of the whistle puts the ship exactly one-quarter mile off the" shore. The echo of the whistle is only of use when nearing land, near high land or in narrow waters There are one thousand miles of these conditions from Seattle to Alaska.-* Sad the captain of the Manuka given a few blasts he might have got an echo off the high.land, near Long Point long before the ship strubk. • \ 5-8 SPANNER.