Navigation Lights.
- Malakai Allen
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Looking at the highest cabin aboard all of the ships in the park, you will see two boxes. These boxes are painted red and green. But what for? These are for the navigation lights. The S.S. Sicamous was launched just 25 years after the Regulations to Prevent Collisions of Vessels at Sea went through. This required all vessels to be outfitted with navigation lights.
Previously in history with sailing ships and even early steam, we saw kerosene and whale oil lamps. Lamps have a few critical issues when it comes to maritime environments. One bad gust of wind, one wave too high and even just running out of fuel these lamps would serve useless. Not to mention the amount of wood and sailcloth hazards - a fire could erupt in seconds on such a flammable vessel. When electric lighting came out, boats soon adopted brighter, more consistent lighting. Early regulations were simple, one bright light in the center or two on the fore and aft of the vessel. Two side lights coloured to determine starboard and port. Green being starboard and red being port. At first, lighting technology was not advanced. The green light was just yellow, though blue paint on the glass cover made it appear as if it was green. To help tell the direction, the boxes covered up the light from the back so that the field of view was choked down to a 90 degree angle pointing forward.
Tug boats and Law enforcement have a larger arrangement of navigation lights. Tugs would display a flashing orange or white light while working underway. Government boats would start to employ the use of IR (Infrared) lights and the classic Blue/Red when working.
Spotlights are not necessarily a navigation light though they serve a similar purpose to that of one. Buoys and Lighthouses also apply to serve as a visibility aid or cautionary to the vessels where they are used.
The start of these lights being standardized was from 1889. When ports would have so much traffic and international logistics, they needed a standardization. With actual regulation this would make all ports safer for travel in poor or dark conditions. In the case of the boats on the Okanagan lake, navigation lights would serve as a way to display to other boats when they are underway and docked. With far less traffic and space than Halifax or Vancouver these lights served more for the companies in the wharves and docks rather than other vessels.
Trains also have their own history for their lights albeit for a completely different reason. Train headlights serve very little in the way of providing a guiding light for the locomotive's engineer, they are for the people ahead on the tracks. North America is unique in the fact that most of their active rail lines are unprotected. Across the pond, due to their population density, all the rails have some form of fencing even if it is a two foot tall stone wall. These train headlights date back to the 1830's in which an inventor used a burning basket on a flatcar covered in sand for fire risk suppression.
Later a reflector car would be added to allow the locomotive to signal at night further distances and more effectively. Later down the line it was a slow evolution with whale oil and kerosene lamps but still served the same idea. Coming into the 20th century and with electric lighting all locomotives were issued with steam electric or diesel generator electric lighting. These kept people and automobiles warned more consistently and effectively than lamps. Following suit the Canadian National Railroad started using Ditch Lights. Ditch lights started in Canada and were essential for lighting up the immediate track below them. The illuminated track allows for those ahead to more precisely pinpoint where the locomotive is under poor light conditions.
Modern high speed rail will employ the same idea as navigation lights on their passenger service trains. Different colours for different companies will distinguish between front and rear, in or out of use, and domestic or foreign. They remain incohesive unlike navigation lights due to tracks being privatized in almost every aspect as to a shipping port used worldwide.
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