Beacons and counterbeacons
I was thinking and reading about the remarkable continuity of beacons. This Acetylene journal has a nice long history of lighthouses and buoys, focused naturally on acetylene.

Beacons have been important parts of shipping for thousands of years, and beacons have also been an important metaphor.



From the Iliad:

So, tonight, wandering sailors pale with fears,
Wide o'er the watery waste, a light appears.
Which, on the far-seen mountain blazing high,
Streams from some lonely watch-tower to the sky.

Lighthouses and buoys used unique sequences of colors or flashes to identify their location. Radio beacons for ships and aircraft adopted the practice with identifiable sequences of Morse. Those sequences turned into call letters, which were later extended to broadcast stations.

Through the same long history, hackers have faked beacons to force shipwrecks and steal the loot:

St. Agnes, Scilly, light, built in 1680. shows an improvement by enclosing the fire with glass, forming a lantern, and the use of a stove-pipe for carrying off the smoke and products of combustion. The first keeper of this light was a wrecker and it was noted that very often his light was very dim, rarely extinguished, however, to cover himself, but dim enough to allow vessels to run on shore and be wrecked. The plunder from wrecked ships was found, after a report and investigation, under a coal pile at the lighthouse.

As I was thinking, I noticed this delicious ZH item.

For instance, those making minimum wage at a Burger King somewhere, while honorable work, may not have the luxuries of the billionaire lifestyle - but at least they never have to worry about slamming their super-yacht into the side of a prized coral reef off the coast of Belize.

Because that's the problem that hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb is being forced to deal with this week. Loeb's yacht damaged what is being called a "pristine reef" near the famous Great Blue Hole outside of Belize, according to Bloomberg.

Loeb's 200 foot yacht was filmed last Sunday anchored at Belize's Lighthouse Reef Atoll.

Obviously Loeb's crew wasn't paying attention to the actual modern lighthouse on Lighthouse Reef, nor to the modern beacons of GPS.

Or maybe a wrecker was jamming GPS? Unlikely. Modern wreckers are probably working for the bankers, just as the old wreckers were often corrupt aristocrats:

The grant by the crown for the establishment of these lights was considered to be of so much importance that one of the noted English lords, very near the court and an adviser of the king. Lord Grenville, notes in his diary : "Watch for the time when the king is in a good humor and ask him for a lighthouse." In this way many of the king's favorites absorbed many of the most important stations. This became in time such an intolerable nuisance that the shipping people petitioned the king for redress.

Henry VIII responded to the pressure by founding Trinity House, a mutual benefit association or guild for sailors, and giving it full authority over lighthouses and navigation. Trinity House still exists and still has the same functions. Remarkable continuity for an organization, breaking all of Parkinson's Laws. Serving the same purpose for 500 years, funded the same way for 500 years. Every ship that docks at British ports pays a user fee to Trinity House.

= = = = =

Irrelevant stupid footnote by a fussbudget proofreader type: The last line of Alexander Pope's translation above should be a lonely watch-tower, not some. The previous three lines have a long-legged meter that beautifully captures the light beam skipping over the waves. Some trips up the meter.

Musical footnote: British semi-modern composer Ethel Smyth wrote an opera about the wreckers.

Later: The interactive radio show 'Calling All Detectives' featured modern wreckers in this episode.

Labels: Trinity House

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