Text by Till Hein
It doesn’t bear thinking about what might have happened if it had rained heavily that night and the Greek warrior hadn’t managed to light his torch. One of the greatest military feats of all time would have failed, and the Trojan Horse would have gone down in world history as a laughing stock.
For ten years, the Hellenic troops had besieged the city of Troy, charging time and again against its fortified walls, to no avail. Then Odysseus came up with the idea of the wooden horse. And once the Trojans had paraded the horse into the city in a triumphal procession and had fallen asleep that night, the Greeks climbed out through a hatch. Odysseus had one of the warriors climb a tower and light a torch as a signal. The Greek fleet had only withdrawn as a ruse; it was hiding in a bay just a few kilometres away. And as soon as they spotted the signal – Odysseus had impressed this upon the naval officers – they were to sail back to the beach at Troy. He nonchalantly opened the city gate, and the Greek troops took their enemies by surprise whilst they slept.
Here you will find more about unusual lighthouses.
The conquest of Troy in the twelfth century BC is just one of many spectacular achievements that were heralded by a signal fire. Signal fires enabled nations to rise to become world powers and helped officers to direct their troops. A flash of light triggered the October Revolution in Russia, and lighthouses saved the lives of millions of seafarers. Yet it is probably no coincidence that the Trojan Horse became famous, whilst the signal torch’s contribution to the Greeks’ triumph was soon forgotten. For most people are landlubbers and have little respect for beacons.
For thousands of years, such lights have guided seafarers. Even in the early modern period, torches spread news faster than any messenger, and today light signals also help in the fight against pirates. Nevertheless, in the age of radar, mobile phones and GPS, many people regard them as Neanderthal technology, and lighthouses seem to them to be of interest only as postcard motifs. “Let the coastal beacons burn, let them shine far out to sea,” Christians still sing in church, “for they surely show many a sailor the way home.” Yet only a few still believe in them. On the coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the lights could soon go out. So it is high time to restore their reputation.
From the Pharos to the Morse lamp
Even what is probably the first lighthouse in world history, built around 285 BC in Alexandria in the Nile Delta, helped to increase power and wealth in its home city. The Pharos, clad in white marble, stood some 120 metres tall, and the wood fire in its spire – though this may be a slight exaggeration – is said to have shone 50 kilometres out into the Mediterranean, guiding sailors safely into the harbour. Alexandria promptly rose to become the most important trading centre of its time.
Some maritime historians claim that a society’s level of civilisation can be gauged by its signal fires. The Romans, for example, covered the coasts under their control with a network of beacons.
For a long time, signal fires were unrivalled when it came to conveying messages over long distances. The Greek victory over Troy, for example, was not merely heralded by the lighting of a single torch; through a relay of further signal fires, news of the triumph spread from island to island in a single night, reaching as far as the palace of Argos in the north-east of the Peloponnese, 500 kilometres away.
During the Peloponnesian War, around 400 BC, marines were already conveying more complex messages using fire signals. The secret signals formed by torches in the night sky provided information, for example, on the number and size of the warships in an approaching enemy fleet. And since the 1870s, when the British Royal Navy introduced the first Morse lamps, entire battle plans – encoded as light signals – have been able to be sent to allies far away.
The October Revolution in Russia, too, can be traced back to a signal flare. When a flash of light lit up the sky above the Peter and Paul Fortress in what is now St Petersburg at 9.40 pm on 25 October 1917, none of those in power took any notice. The revolutionaries on board the armoured cruiser ‘Aurora’, however, which was anchored in the city’s harbour, were privy to the plan for the uprising. They immediately fired a shot from the ship’s cannon. It was the starting signal for the storming of the Winter Palace, where Russia’s Provisional Government had its seat – the Bolshevik Revolution was set in motion.
Why light at sea saves lives
Yet light signals are not only a success story as a means of communication. Thanks to lighthouses, which guide ships past reefs and shoals into harbour, seafaring has become increasingly safe. Even if some people abused the trust placed in such signal lights. ‘Lord, bless our shore,’ the people on the North and East Frisian islands would pray in centuries past, adding quietly: ‘with flotsam.’ For an ancient law, the jus naufragii, stated that flotsam belongs to the finder.
As not enough ships carrying ‘God’s gifts’ were foundering off the coast, some of the islanders on Rügen decided to lend the Almighty a hand. On stormy nights, they piled up straw and wood on Thiessow beach and set it alight. The flames shone out across the sea, guiding the sailors to their doom. Many captains mistook the sight for the great beacon on the mainland ahead of them, which marked the mouth of the Oder. They altered their course and crashed their ships on the Südperd. “As soon as another ship had been wrecked, the people of Rügen would fish with nets for God’s gifts,” explains local historian Siegfried Schmidt from the Baltic resort of Göhren.
It was ultimately the government that put an end to the will-o’-the-wisps on Rügen. The island, which was still administered by the Kingdom of Sweden in the 19th century, came under Prussian rule in 1815. Shortly afterwards, King Frederick William III enacted a law strictly forbidding the people of Rügen from lighting fires on the beach.
Signal lights help to prevent collisions not only along the coast, but also on the ships themselves. As early as 740 AD, the Byzantine Emperor Leo the Isaurian therefore enacted the first law on ship lighting: to prevent sailors from ramming barges at anchor at night, these were to be illuminated by a white light.
For more than 1,000 years, humanity managed just fine with this system. It is true that, even in the early modern period, many sailing ships were already criss-crossing the world’s oceans. But the vessels of that era were small and slow, and collisions were rare. In the 19th century, however, the invention of the steam engine accelerated maritime travel. And coloured navigation lights were introduced in an attempt to counter the resulting hazards.
Ever since then, a ship’s port side has been marked with a red position light, and the starboard side with a green light. Old sea dogs have long claimed that it’s easy to remember where the red light goes: “If a right-hander gives you a slap across the face, then port side is red.”
However, things almost turned out differently. In 1834, the British shipping company City of Dublin Steamship Company proposed a white light on the starboard side and a red light on the port side. Their rivals from Southampton, however, used a red light on the starboard side and a green light on the port side. Other shipping companies adopted yet different colour arrangements – and, amidst all this colourful chaos, more and more ships collided with one another. It was not until 1847 that the British government intervened and laid down the regulations that remain in force throughout the world to this day.
At sea, broadly speaking, the rule is ‘right before left’. If the navigator spots the red navigation light of another vessel on the steering side – the starboard side – of his ship, it acts like a red traffic light: ‘Stop! No right of way!’, and he must alter his course to give way. If, on the other hand, he sees a green light, he can stay on course without worry, as the other vessel is moving away from him – a simple system.
When lights protect and betray
Position lights are only a hindrance if you do not want to be seen. Just like the ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ on 30 January 1945: travelling at twelve knots, the ship battled its way westwards through the stormy seas of the Bay of Gdańsk. The people on board were fleeing from the Red Army. That is why the ship sailed through the darkness without any lights.
Among the passengers were many women, children and elderly people. Yet the *Gustloff* was the flagship of the Nazi ‘KdF’ holiday fleet and an object of hatred for many Russians. At around 6 pm, with night having already fallen, a radio message came in on the bridge: a mine-sweeping unit was heading straight for the ship!
To avoid a collision, the captain ordered the navigation lights to be switched on. But no ship was approaching. Had the radio message been a mistake? Or an act of treachery? At 7.30 pm, the captain ordered the lights to be switched off again. But a Soviet submarine had already picked up the trail. Shortly after 9.00 pm, three torpedoes struck the ‘Gustloff’. 9,000 people lost their lives. The lights, which were meant to offer protection, had lured death instead.
For the most part, however, people at sea benefit from the glow of the signal lights. They offer hope, provide guidance and help to pass the time.
Morse, pirates, emancipation and love
And you can even flirt by flashing lights, as Stephanie Batstone and Jack Campbell proved in the spring of 1944. In early May 1944, the US Navy warship ‘Matt W. Ransom’ was anchored off the west coast of Scotland, near the small town of Oban. For security reasons, the marines were not allowed to leave the ship for weeks on end.
Jack Campbell, a 19-year-old from Ohio, was one of the men on board. They were soon to go to war against Germany. Jack was waiting, bored out of his mind. He’d heard that there were some hot girls working at the Royal Navy radio station in Oban. If only he could get off that damned ship! One night, using an Aldis lamp – a special lamp for transmitting Morse code – he tried to make contact.
When Stephanie Batsone, aged 21 and one of the radio operators at the station, noticed the Aldis lamp flashing a few miles off the coast, she sent a Morse code reply; she and Jack soon took a liking to one another. The principle was simple: A short flash of the lamp corresponded to a dot, a long one to a dash – and, as is well known, all the letters of the Morse code are made up of these two symbols. “So, what have you been up to all day?” Stephanie flashed over one of the following nights. “Waiting for you to get in touch,” Jack replied. The two of them grew bolder, and they invented a new signal: if they let the Morse lamp’s light shine continuously for a few seconds, it symbolised a kiss. “Give me a goodnight kiss.” – “Mmm, that was lovely,” Jack flashed. “One more, baby, you’re wonderful.”
D-Day – the Allied landings on the coast of northern France on 6 June 1944 – brought this unusual wartime romance to an end. It was not until 2001 – half a century later, after Batstone had published a book about the Morse affair – that the two met for an interview on a British breakfast television programme.
Torch of Emancipation
A lighthouse on the banks of the Elbe, meanwhile, brought a new dimension to gender relations – as a beacon of emancipation. For centuries, lighthouse keeping had been considered a male-dominated profession. But when Johannes Mietbauer, who was on duty on the ‘Schlanke Anna’, died in 1927, his widow Emma took over. Until the age of 74, she climbed the 171 steps of the narrow spiral staircase up and down several times a day, a total of around 35,000 times. Eventually, Emma herself came to be known simply as the ‘Slender Anna’, and she went down in history as the heroine of the lighthouse.
More recently, engineers have been seeking to use the power of light to ensure safety in a completely different way: a modern method of countering piracy is called ‘Secure Ship’ and is recommended by the International Maritime Bureau. It is a kind of electric fence, powered by 9,000 volts of electricity, which is wrapped around the ship’s railing. If a pirate steps onto the deck at night, he is automatically blinded by a bright light; and if that does not drive him away, he receives an electric shock that sends him backwards overboard.
Which does not detract from the qualities of light as a means of bringing people together. When Japanese nationalists began building a lighthouse in September 1996 on a tiny uninhabited island in the East China Sea, 150 kilometres north-east of Taiwan, it was one such moment of clarity: Tokyo had long claimed that the island had been discovered by Japanese sailors in 1884. However, in the autumn of 1996, both Beijing and Taipei immediately announced that the island had been part of their territory ‘for 500 years’ and was therefore ‘Chinese in any case’. The Japanese’s lighthouse provocation thus made it possible for the leaders in China and Taiwan to be, for once, in complete agreement.
Why light hasn’t had its day yet
Despite their many merits, however, these historic lighthouses are now under threat. The electricity for the German lighthouses on the Baltic Sea alone costs around half a million euros every year, and in the age of radar, GPS, mobile phones and Facebook, many consider them dispensable.
There are still just under 100 lighthouses along the coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Some are operating at reduced power, whilst others have already been switched off. Yet GPS reception is sometimes disrupted by hail, snowstorms or strong solar winds. And what seems even more dangerous is that the US military reserves the right to temporarily shut down the satellite-based positioning system “in the event of an extraordinary threat to national security”.
So perhaps the days of traditional signal fires are far from over: in the 1980s, for example, the US Navy – and shortly afterwards the German Navy as well – phased out Morse code as a means of communication. However, as early as the beginning of the 21st century, this tried-and-tested method was reintroduced in the US for emergency situations – and the German Navy has promptly returned to using Morse signal lamps as well.
And one belief has remained unshaken throughout the ages: the conviction that lighthouses guide lovers to the safe harbour of marriage. Since the turn of the millennium, well over 2,000 couples have exchanged vows in front of the Heligoland lighthouse alone.
Romance, caution or sheer nostalgia: will shipping still need visible light signals in the future, or has on-board electronics long since made them redundant? Share your views in the comments.
