‘No light could penetrate thick fogs so systems of bells, fog-horns, gongs, sirens, and whistles and other noise makers were devised. These were used both on land and on the moving vessels. British shipping used a system of horns, whistles and bells: “Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the introduction of the steam power and the vast increase in British shipping about this time rendered necessary some definite and universally understood rules for signaling in foggy weather, and in 1858 the Admiralty first sanctioned the use of a horn to indicate the starboard tack, and a bell the port tack: in 1863 steamers were ordered to use a steam whistle in fog, and sailing ships a foghorn, whilst ships at anchor rang their bells at stated intervals.”’ Encyclopaedia of ships and shipping edited by Herbert B. Mason Image Collection of Maggie Land Blanck http://www.maggieblanck.com/Immigration.html
#OTD in 1873
‘The Fog Bell’
a necessary technological response to the rise of steam power
👉ALT
*Harper’s Weekly*, February 8, 1873
#immigration #steamship #fogbell
