Assalamualaikum, and welcome back to Orange Shots.
You guys asked me a very interesting question.
Why don't ships have headlights?
Now, since the question is so interesting,
it's definitely going to have an interesting answer.
First tell me: why do we even use headlights?
Why do we need headlights?
Okay, I understand
that all vehicles that travel by road have headlights.
Even aeroplanes (or what the Americans call airplanes) have headlights.
Almost all modes of transportation have headlights.
But why don't ships have them?
Why's that so?
Again let's go back to the same question.
Why do you need headlights?
When there's a target approaching you
and you need to identify it.
You're definitely going to use your car headlights,
or your motorcycle headlights.
As for the road you're on, the route you're taking,
you're going to need your headlights to identify it.
To see both sides of the road you're on,
you're going to need headlights,
so you don't end up in the mud,
so you don't get derailed and end up in an accident.
So definitely, you need headlights for that.
When there's a sharp turn on the road,
when you have to enter a street, when you have to identify a street,
when you have to identify a turn,
you're going to need headlights.
At the same time, when you need to attract someone's attention,
when you need to tell someone you need to overtake them
and you need them to clear the way
so that you can speed by,
you're going to use your headlights
and your indicator lights.
But the issue with headlights is that
have you ever tried to check the headlight range of these vehicles?
Meaning, how far you can see with them?
Not very far.
100 metres, 200, metres, 250 metres,
300 metres tops.
Okay, let's make that 400 metres.
I don't think you can see beyond this range, though.
Now, bring all these scenarios to ships.
In an open sea, there's no such "turn" we have to take
that we might later regret not taking,
It doesn't happen that way.
There are no roads in an open sea,
so we don't need to check our left and right peripheries either.
Where does the road end? Right, or left? There's nothing like that.
There are targets,
but considering a ship's stopping distance,
considering its speed,
there's no such headlight that
could ever help us identify a target because
again, remember,
the biggest issue with headlights is that their range
may be helpful for regular vehicles,
but it's not as good for marine vessels.
Even if you attach gigantic headlights,
like the lights you see lighting up clouds
and you see different designs on them,
their range is up to 3-4 kilometres, or 3-4 miles;
so even if you attach headlights similar to those,
they're not going to be useful for us.
That's because in order to identify targets,
there's one thing that's very important, i.e.,
your light should reach your target
reflect on said target and come back to you.
That should then let you identify your target clearly.
Now, the cloud lights I just talked about,
if you've ever noticed the images they generate on the clouds
they are gigantic.
When the light reflects back to reach your line of sight,
the image appears sizable.
Sizable enough for you to imagine and see.
In the case of ships,
if you ever need to identify another ship,
and it's pretty far away from you,
and by the time your light reaches that target
and reflects back to you,
the target ship will appear small,
and due to the black hull (of any ship) and the darkness of the night,
and the white accommodation (of any ship),
it's quite difficult to identify the target on the horizon.
It could be a ship or very well not be one.
Because of that, ships use something different from regular headlights.
To understand all of this, consider a city.
Imagine you're on the motorway if you're in Pakistan.
If you're in India, imagine an expressway.
The city starts becoming visible to you from a distance.
First you see the glow of the city,
that glow reaches the clouds,
you can tell it's the city's dense lights.
The closer you get to the city,
you start to see the building lights.
You can, again, tell there's something there because of the lights.
We try to do the same thing with ships.
A ship is fitted with a green light on the right
which, of course, isn't exactly a floodlight but
you can see it from quite a distance.
On the left side is a red light.
It indicates the left side (or port side) of a ship.
There's also one light at the ship's forward,
and one attached to the aft mast.
These lights can be visible for up to 6 miles,
and that's how you can make out the aspect of a ship.
If you notice that the forward mast light
and the aft mast light are lined up,
it means that a ship is approaching you.
If you only see a ship's green light
you know its right side is facing you.
If the light is red, that means its left side is facing you.
And that's quite easy compared to
attaching giant headlights to a ship.
They might be distracting to other ships,
they might confuse onlookers, with the big lights and all.
They might confuse the people running the ship (with the headlights), too.
These lights help differentiate one ship from another.
These lights are also adjusted to a ship's length so that
you know how long the ship is.
At the same time, additional lights are also attached
for ships engaged in different operations.
This way, I can easily see another ship from mine.
Because remember, at night it's completely dark,
there's no other light to distract you,
so the red light, green light, and white light,
white over red, red over white,
are visible to you.
If a ship were fitted with headlights, I wouldn't be able to identify it.
I wouldn't know the direction it's headed, what side is facing me, its aspect;
because figuring out a ship's aspect,
determining what side of it is visible to you,
is quite important,
This helps with collision avoidance.
Now moving on from ships.
What about targets?
It isn't only ships that should be visible in the dark.
It could be buoys,
it could be land, which is also important to identify.
How do we do all of that?
The same concept is used with buoys, and land.
Buoys are usually fitted with lights,
sound signals, racons.
The use of AIS identifiers is also common these days.
You can easily use your radar or AIS, to visually identify and differentiate
one buoy from another.
The light is designed to not be distracting
so that it doesn't cause navigation problems,
but it's still easily visible.
Now, when it comes to land,
it can be identified via lighthouses.
Towards the coast (wherever it's needed)
light towers called lighthouses are usually built.
They're pretty large and towering.
Every lighthouse has its own characteristics
that way we know we're drawing close to land. It helps us avoid it
or in case we're passing close to it, we know to keep a safe distance.
Leading lights are also built into the ground,
one in line with another.
If we see them lined up, that means we're approaching land correctly.
So in a nutshell
and to put it simply,
instead of using big headlights to see ahead,
every surface is illuminated with small lights.
Those lights have different colours and characteristics, e.g.,
green, yellow, white, blue,
all those different sorts of colours.
We can use charts to identify these lights, their colours, and characteristics.
"This light is spinning, it's a lighthouse."
Those two lights are stationary, they're leading lights",
and things like that.
The main reason is that
big lights can be highly distracting,
tiny lights don't help much either.
The targets we usually need to identify are miles away,
2, 4, 6, 8 miles, sometimes even 10.
So attaching headlights to a ship is not the solution.
The best solution is the one I just told you,
illuminating every surface that needs to be seen with lights,
lights with different characteristics for us
to identify them easily.
These are the reasons why
ships don't have headlights.
If you how we deal with storms at sea,
the link to that video is here.
If you want to know how food gets transported to ships,
and how we manage it once it's there,
the link to that video is here.
Until my next video, take good care of yourselves.
remember me in your prayers.
With tons of love to my Orange Shots family,
and to-be Orange Shots family.
This is me Zahid Nisar.
You're watching Orange Shots.
And until my next video,
ALLAH Hafiz.