Assalamualaikum and welcome back to Orange Shots.
When the merchant navy business first started out,
there was obviously no aid to navigation.
There weren't any established yet to save ships from disaster.
Ships would collide with rocks and sink.
They would collide with reefs as well
because no one could determine the depths of the water.
One more thing I'd like to tell you is
that whenever we operate a ship,
the correct term for that is navigation,
i.e., navigating a ship.
Whatever is used to help with navigation is called "aid to navigation",
meaning, that thing helps us with navigation.
Aid to navigation consists of a lot of things.
We already have electronic aids to navigation
but physical aids to navigation are a big support
when it comes to ship navigation.
Physical aids of navigation include buoys, beacons, radio beacons,
Racons, leading lights, clearing lines, and of course, lighthouses.
To make ship navigation safe when ships enter a country
or leave it to go to another country,
To keep them from grounding, because if they do, their future is dark.
This is why lighthouses exist.
90% of the world's trade is by sea.
If shipping weren't safe,
so the 90% goods entering your country and leaving it,
how do you imagine they operate?
Obviously, this can lead to further disaster.
A good example of this is the Suez Canal.
The Suez Canal was blocked for a few days.
Europe was in a fit.
So ensuring the safety of ships entering and leaving a country is important.
That's exactly why lighthouses exist.
They come in many sizes. From shorter ones 10-12 meters tall,
and larger ones around 30-40 meters in height.
They could be around 120-130 feet in height.
The concept of lighthouses was realized long ago.
Lighthouses were built around the 16th century.
The most brilliant example of this is the Eddy Stone rock,
found south of the English channel.
A lot of ships would end up colliding with the Eddy Stone rock.
Ships would end up sinking, sometimes even along with their cargo.
English ships weren't the only ones getting destroyed that way, in fact,
the ships entering and leaving England were also affected.
That was when the idea of a guiding structure came into existence.
That way, ships would be able to see the Eddy Stone rock from afar.
That was when a lighthouse was erected near the rock,
it was destroyed and rebuilt over the years, much like every other lighthouse.
Now, you must be wondering what a lighthouse is.
And how does it help a ship? How does it guide the ship towards safety?
Is that even enough?
There could be shallow waters towards the left and right of the lighthouse.
The answer to your first question is: A lighthouse is a tall structure.
There's always a light at the top.
Lighthouses are built in places
that could be considered dangerous for ships.
Places dangerous enough to destroy ships, to cause them to sink.
The height of a lighthouse depends
on the weather of the region it's built in
and the depth of its surrounding area.
If the area is large (and dangerous)
the lighthouse is built taller to make it more visible.
If it's merely a rock, a shorter lighthouse would do.
The second deciding factor is the regional weather.
If the weather is rough with 10-15 meter waves,
the lighthouse is supposed to be built taller
than the maximum height of those waves.
There's always light at the top of a lighthouse.
The lights come in different so people can tell lighthouses apart.
There's yellow, green, red,
this helps onlookers differentiate one lighthouse from another.
The light has another characteristic called flashing and occulting.
Flashing means a longer duration of darkness and a shorter duration of light
Flashing is when a light turns on for 1 second every 5 seconds.
The second characteristic is called occulting.
Occulting is considered the opposite of flashing.
In occulting, the light duration lasts longer than the dark.
If a light turns off for 1 second every 5 seconds
it's displaying an "occulting" characteristic.
Combining the light's colour and
its property i.e., flashing or occulting
gives a lighthouse a unique distinguishable light.
So that's what a lighthouse is, and why it's built.
Now, on to the next subject.
How can one save their ship with the help of a lighthouse?
It isn't necessary for shallow waters to be found around lighthouses.
There could be shallow waters stretching for miles around them.
Usually, the area around a lighthouse is shallow, with rocks and whatnot.
So, what's the point of a lighthouse?
How do we save our ship with the help of a lighthouse?
There are many ways for lighthouses to save ships.
I would like to tell you a few facts.
The first thing you do when you see a lighthouse is identify it.
You determine its light and its properties. Now comes the next step.
Saving our ship from the shallow waters.
One way is to take bearings
We already know the lighthouse's geographical location on the chart.
We have our gyrocompass and our magnetic compass.
We take our bearing, determining the lighthouse's angle against our ship.
That through that bearing,
we're able to pass at a safe distance around the lighthouse.
Now we know about the lighthouse and the shallow area around it,
we already have it marked on our chart.
We already have it written down, i.e., the area we have to steer clear of.
We take the lighthouse's bearings and safely pass it at a safe distance.
Not only does that save us from the area where the lighthouse is,
but it also saves us from the shallow waters around the lighthouse.
That's one way to save a ship,
i.e., passing at a safe distance away from the lighthouse.
The second is: If we need to turn near a lighthouse,
we determine a certain bearing around the lighthouse and observe it.
Once we reach that bearing, that angle,
we can alter our course safely.
That way our ship is safe from shallow waters.
So that's the technique we use in those cases.
There's something called a clearing range
in which we estimate a
certain distance away from a lighthouse, e.g., 3 miles,
we consider that a safe distance away from the lighthouse.
We then mark a 3-mile circle around the lighthouse on the chart.
The lighthouse bearing in conjunction with your geographical position,
helps us pass around the lighthouse at a safe distance.
By the way, there are some lighthouses
that show a different coloured light at a certain arc
and that light colour will change at a different arc.
I mean the light colour's the same, but lenses are fit onto them
so that mariners coming from opposite directions can see different colours
and navigate their ships at a safe distance away from the lighthouse.
Lighthouses are a great help during the daytime, too.
I'm sure most of you have studied maths.
And those of you who remember 8-10 grade maths,
can solve a right angle triangle problem.
Now we know where the lighthouse is.
Its height starting from its base to its top,
let's consider it to be 30 meters.
If you use a sextant to measure the angle the lighthouse's top makes with our ship,
we all know the angle at the base is 90 degrees.
The top angle we determine by taking our bearing
and we already know the angle from the base to the top.
That way we can easily solve the triangle
and find out our ship's distance from the lighthouse.
That's how you clear a ship from a lighthouse during the day.
There's another technique derived from this technique
where you determine the minimum distance to maintain from the lighthouse.
You measure the angle from the top of the lighthouse again,
and that helps you determine if you are at a safe distance from the lighthouse.
And that's yet another way you can clear your way from the lighthouse.
Now in these scenarios, the lighthouse was off to the side,
there could be cases where the lighthouse was right in front of a ship.
And then you spot the lighthouse.
No need to worry.
Every light at the top of a lighthouse
also signifies how far it can be seen, i.e.,
it could be visible 6 miles, 8, 12 miles or so away.
So even if it's right in front of your ship,
you can refer to your chart to know far it should've been visible to you.
This gives you a rough estimate
of your distance away from land or the lighthouse.
Then you can take appropriate action.
Here's an interesting fact for you.
Before electronic aids navigation was universalised,
when GPS wasn't so common,
when radars and Rasberry Pis weren't so common;
radars and Rasberry Pis are still used in conjunction with the lighthouse, however,
but back when these weren't so common at all
Visual ATON (aids to navigation)
were very, very important.
And visual ATONs weren't just limited to lighthouses,
there were buoys, beacons, rocks.
Sometimes it would even be a mosque built on a piece of land,
it would be marked on the chart (even to this day).
Cathedrals were also marked.
They would have an idea of what the cathedral
would look like from their vantage point.
Sometimes even factories would be marked on charts.
That way people would know from their vantage point at sea how
objects and buildings on land appeared to them.
The heights of rocks are also mentioned on the charts.
even the heights of mountains a ship passes by are mentioned.
All these in conjunction with the sextant and the techniques we usually use,
we still practice them today, that's what's so interesting.
Even today, using these techniques in conjunction
we can still determine the position of our ships.
Even if our electronic equipment fails,
we can use these aids to navigation to steer our ships.
We still practice these techniques today.
Not only that,
we can even navigate during the day looking at the sun.
Using a sextant, and with the help of the sun we can determine
where our ship is in the world.
Sounds strange, doesn't it? But it's possible.
The moon.
I make videos about the Ramadan moon
because it is everyday work for us.
If we didn't know about the state of the moon's visibility, we wouldn't
be able to determine the position of our ship.
Because of that, we always know when the moon is going to be visible.
When to start fasting, when to break our fast, we know everything.
Then we have the planets. Mars, Venus, Jupiter, etc.
Looking at them, not only can we navigate our ships,
but we can also determine our ship's position.
One more thing I'd like to highlight,
it's every country's job to maintain their own lighthouses.
If we have one in Pakistan, the Pakistani authorities will maintain it.
If it's in India, the Indian authorities will maintain it.
Again, it's every country's responsibility to maintain their own lighthouses,
and to ensure safe marine travels.
Like I said, more than 90% of the world's trade is through ships.
If ships stopped workings, our trade system would be halted.
So it's in every country's interest to
maintain their aids to navigation.
I believe you will enjoy this video about lighthouses.
If you want to know how ships turn
my video about that is linked here.
And f you want to know why a ship has two lifeboats,
you'll find a video about that 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.