What Ship Where Bound?: A History of Visual Communication at Sea
✍ Scribed by Craddock, David
- Publisher
- Naval Institute Press
- Year
- 2021
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 5 MB
- Category
- Fiction
- ISBN-13
- 9781526784827
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
What Ship, Where Bound? takes its title from the familiar opening exchange of signals between passing ships, and celebrates the long history of visual communications at sea. It traces the visual language of signalling from the earliest naval banners or streamers used by the Byzantines in AD 900 through to morse signalling still used at sea today.
The three sections, Flag Signalling, Semaphore, and Light Signalling each trace the development of the respective methods in meeting the needs of commanders for secure and unambiguous communication with their fleets. Though inextricably linked to naval tactics and fleet manoeuvres, the history of signalling at sea also reflects the exponential growth in global maritime trade in the nineteenth century when dozens of competing systems vied for the attention of ship owners and led to a huge proliferation of codes.
By setting each method in the context of its time, the book explores their practical use, successes and...