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Ransome\'s Buoyage
I am intrigued. I've just been re-reading Arthur Ransome's 'We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea'. In Chapter IV the children are heading down river, from Pin Mill towards Harwich, on their first trip aboard Jim Brading's Goblin.
' Jim was sitting on the cockpit coaming, relighting the tobacco that was left in that pipe of his, and giving a first lesson in pilotage.
' "Red buoys and conical buoys to starboard," he was saying. "Black can buoys to port ... That's coming up with the flood," he explained. "So we leave the conical ones to port now, because were going out, not coming in."
' "That's a conical one?" said Titty.
' "Yes. That's on the edge of the mud off Levington Creek, and that other one, just ahead, with a cormorant on it, is conical, too. That's a can buoy, over there, the black one off Collimer Point."
' "So we leave it to starboard?" said John.
' "Pass close to it. You can bring her head on it now." '
So according to Ransome, what we would refer to as a starboard hand mark was red conical, and the port hand mark was a black can.
I learnt my buoyage in 1976, when IALA buoyage was just being introduced. The first place in the world to get it was the Thames Estuary, where I sailed. As my sailing world expanded, so did IALA buoyage, so I've only actually seen IALA buoys. But on my shore-based course I had to learn both IALA buoyage and the previous UK system.
I still have the little laminated card describing the old system, and some old Admiralty Pilots giving the same information. According to the Pilots, the UK used "The Uniform System of Maritime Buoyage, in accordance with the international agreement in Geneva in 1936, which has never been fully ratified". And in that system port hand marks were cans, coloured either plain red or red chequered with yellow or white. Starboard hand marks were conical, coloured either plain black or black chequered with yellow or white. So although the shapes are the same as Ransome's, the colours are reversed.
Now according to my copy of 'We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea', the book was first published in 1937. So it was probably written before the 'new' buoyage was laid. But if Ransome was right about pre-1937 buoyage, then round about that time we must have totally reversed the buoyage colours round the UK. Does anyone know what really happened? Did "Red, Right, Returning" apply to the UK? And if so, what does it make of the story that the Americans reversed the colour of their buoyage in order to confuse the British Navy? Or was Ransome wrong?
I am intrigued. I've just been re-reading Arthur Ransome's 'We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea'. In Chapter IV the children are heading down river, from Pin Mill towards Harwich, on their first trip aboard Jim Brading's Goblin.
' Jim was sitting on the cockpit coaming, relighting the tobacco that was left in that pipe of his, and giving a first lesson in pilotage.
' "Red buoys and conical buoys to starboard," he was saying. "Black can buoys to port ... That's coming up with the flood," he explained. "So we leave the conical ones to port now, because were going out, not coming in."
' "That's a conical one?" said Titty.
' "Yes. That's on the edge of the mud off Levington Creek, and that other one, just ahead, with a cormorant on it, is conical, too. That's a can buoy, over there, the black one off Collimer Point."
' "So we leave it to starboard?" said John.
' "Pass close to it. You can bring her head on it now." '
So according to Ransome, what we would refer to as a starboard hand mark was red conical, and the port hand mark was a black can.
I learnt my buoyage in 1976, when IALA buoyage was just being introduced. The first place in the world to get it was the Thames Estuary, where I sailed. As my sailing world expanded, so did IALA buoyage, so I've only actually seen IALA buoys. But on my shore-based course I had to learn both IALA buoyage and the previous UK system.
I still have the little laminated card describing the old system, and some old Admiralty Pilots giving the same information. According to the Pilots, the UK used "The Uniform System of Maritime Buoyage, in accordance with the international agreement in Geneva in 1936, which has never been fully ratified". And in that system port hand marks were cans, coloured either plain red or red chequered with yellow or white. Starboard hand marks were conical, coloured either plain black or black chequered with yellow or white. So although the shapes are the same as Ransome's, the colours are reversed.
Now according to my copy of 'We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea', the book was first published in 1937. So it was probably written before the 'new' buoyage was laid. But if Ransome was right about pre-1937 buoyage, then round about that time we must have totally reversed the buoyage colours round the UK. Does anyone know what really happened? Did "Red, Right, Returning" apply to the UK? And if so, what does it make of the story that the Americans reversed the colour of their buoyage in order to confuse the British Navy? Or was Ransome wrong?
