Rules at sea

When sailors want to go from one place to another, they don't use a map, they use a chart. The chart has all sorts of extra information on it. The numbers out in the water area show how deep it is at that point. The red marks show where there are lights that blink at night to show where there are rocks, or sand banks.

Sometimes people have to sail at night, and it is very difficult to tell where you are. The first lighthouses were built thousands of years ago, and their light was a fire, with mirrors behind it to reflect the light out to sea. Nowadays the lights are electrical, and often noone is needed to look after them at all. So lighthouses today don't very often have a lighthouse keeper, as they used to.

 

When you are driving down the road, you don't hit other cars because everybody follows the same rules, and keeps to one side of the road. At sea, there are also rules about who gives way when two boats are on a collision course, and anyone who drives or sails a boat needs to learn these rules. Small boats must always give way to big boats, because it takes so long for big boats to turn or to stop. What might happen if you went out in a boat and you didn't know the rules?

When great big ships from other countries come into a port, the captain of the ship hands over control to a pilot. The pilot is a person from that port, who knows it very well. He takes over telling the crew what to do, and where to go. He will take the ship into port, and then take it out again when it leaves.

This system was designed to stop people who didn't know what problems there were in a particular harbour from having accidents. You have to do a lot of training to become a pilot, because you have to know how to run many different sorts of ships, and know a lot about navigation. There are sea routes that are like lanes on a road, and ships must stay in these routes. They cannot just go where they like. In the early days, pilots used to be taken out to ships as they got near the harbour in a tug boat. But these days, they are often delivered to the ship they are bringing in by helicopter. Can you see the pilot hanging down below the helicopter, as he is being lowered to the deck? How would you like his job?