Why Rules of the Road? Here is the Answer: Schooner Days CMLVIII (958)

by C. H. J. Snider

Stick to the rules, and everybody comes through such situations as

II.

"IF RED TO STARBOARD SHOULD APPEAR

IT IS YOUR DUTY TO KEEP CLEAR,

TO ACT AS JUDGMENT SAYS IS PROPER,

TO PORT OR STARBOARD, BACK, OR STOP HER

BUT IF ON YOUR PORT BOW IS SEEN

A STRANGER'S STARBOARD LAMP OF GREEN,

THERE'S NOT MUCH FOR YOU TO DO,

FOR GREEN TO PORT KEEPS CLEAR OF YOU."

TO IMPRESS it on our memory the shellback tells us the same thing twice. If you see a red light on your starboard side you know that something is coming up from behind or down from ahead to your right. It is up to you to keep out of his road. Turn, stop, back, do anything that is required. The same thing applies if you see both his red and green lights on your starboard side. If only his green, he is going in the opposite direction and should draw away from you.

"GREEN TO GREEN ALL SERENE"

But don't take a chance. Whatever is on your starboard side going or coming has the right of way, and you have to keep clear of him. But, as the rhyme says consolingly, green to port keeps clear of you.

After all, the most important rule of the road is not the first, which tells you what to do when you are meeting head on — "Starboard helm and show your red - but we may call No. 2, which tells what to do when crossing courses obliquely, either meeting, overtaking, or being overtaken. These are situations of concern for everybody, whether shellback or greenhorn. But the shellback's worry is much the lesser, for he has this No. 2 rule to guide him, ground into him from his cradle:

We are talking all the time of colored lights, as though all maneuvering was done at night. The same colors and the same rules of course apply every hour in the twenty-four. The colors are only symbols of the sides, port and starboard, red and green. You can see which side is which by daylight, irrespective of the paint, if you know your right hand from the left. But you may notice all the practical lads show their lantern boxes and screens, painted bright red and bright green, at high noon and all times. Do the same. It's a wonderful insurance against some unskilled amateur putting the lanterns wrong-side-to at lighting up time, or forgetting that port is the left hand side looking forward and starboard is the right.

At night you just become two colored lights to all beholders, if you are under sail. If steaming you must show white masthead lights as well. Conversely, the stranger's side, which you can see plain as a haystack by day, may be a blank, nothing at all, to you at night, or it may be a bewildering line of lighted ports. Not until you can pick out a red light in it, will you know that it is a port side. Or, if a green one. the starboard side. Then you will know which way the stranger is headed. Maybe he is passing away from you. Maybe coming up on you.

No matter which, if he is on your starboard, your right hand side, keep clear of him, by day or by night. That is your duty.

"MICHIGAN WOLVERINE"

I was very much interested in the picture of and reference to the U.S.S. Michigan because one summer's tour of duty while a member of the Naval Reserve was done on that vessel. She was based at a camp near Waukegan, Ill. (on Lake Michigan) and we were quartered on shore because no space was available on board. We went aboard daily for short cruises, gunnery practice, etc.

Her name was afterward changed to U.S.S. Wolverine (because state names were reserved for battleships) and some years ago I saw her tied up at Erie, Pennsylvania.

Recently it was announced that she was to be dismantled and broken up.

—FRANK W. HUNT.

Thanks, shipmate.