SIGNALMAN TAKES A HOLIDAY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 105, 27 January 1939, Page 8

SIGNALMAN TAKES A HOLIDAY

Flags Not Hoisted On Mount Victoria

TEMPORARY BREAK IN OLD-TIME CUSTOM The old and picturesque custom of signalling the approach of incoming ships from the Alount Victoria signal station has been temporarily discontinued. Wellington Harbour Board officials said yesterday, however, that it would be resumed as soon as the signalman resumed his duties after his annual holiday. For many years it has been the custom to announce the approach of ships entering the port of Wellington by hoisting a signal on the flagstaff at the top of Mount Victoria as soon as the ship has been sighted from the heads. The signal is kept flying till the ship has entered the harbour. From the nature of the flags and black shapes displayed, the initiated can tell the type of vessel approaching, from which end of Cook Strait she is coming, and to what shipping company she belongs. Though still greatly appreciated by those members of the public whose duties involve the meeting of overseas ships, the service has outlasted its original significance, when it was the first intimation to the Wellington shipping world of the approach of a ship. Radio and telephone have long supplanted visual signals and the harbour board and shipping companies are today well aware of the impending arrival of a vessel long before she is signalled from Mount Victoria.

To those who meet the incoming ships, however, the signal still has a practical value, as it tells them <that the ship has been sighted from the heads, and that it is high time to repair on board the tender which meets the liner off Point Halswell. And though the majority of the public probably did not even notice the absence of the signals in the past few days, it was a subject of discussion and speculation yesterday among the port officials, tourist agents, pressmen, and others who went out yesterday to meet the liner Tamaroa on her arrival from Southampton.