PatCassidy
05-02-2008, 12:42 PM
If I had a dollar for every time I heard about how clever colonists switched red and green buoys to trick English ships entering the Hudson River....
So I did some googling and this is what I came up with:
Spar buoys, made of long cedar or juniper poles, and cask buoys were the predominant buoys in U.S. coastal waters until the 1840s.
The United States did not have a standard system of buoyage until 1848. Colors, shapes, and sizes varied from port to port. Contractors had free reign to decide the types of buoys necessary for a given area or harbor.
The lack of standardization caused problems for coastal pilots. When asked to comment on buoyage to Congress in 1850, they complained bitterly. Their most common complaint was that the buoys were so small, that to see them they had to run them down.
Records of buoys from this era are so lacking that a clear picture of U.S. buoys is difficult to piece together. Buoys were tended privately by contractors who relied on smallboats with limited lifting capability and sailing vessels with such limited maneuverability as to render the accurate placement of buoys impossible.
Contractors also supplied the buoys suggesting that they manufactured them according to the capability of their vessels. Buoys remained small and were of little use to local pilots, who relied on landmarks to establish their positions. Small buoys were particularly hazardous to inexperienced or unfamiliar mariners.
By 1846, Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker admitted that buoys placed by local authorities under loose regulations, coupled with the lack of standardized colors and numbers, were practically useless. Congress, sensitive to complaints about the ATON system, began taking steps to correct the problems in 1848. It adopted the Lateral System for implementation nationwide. It is from the Lateral System that the familiar "right, red, return" has its origin.
Here is the link:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbouys1.htm
So I did some googling and this is what I came up with:
Spar buoys, made of long cedar or juniper poles, and cask buoys were the predominant buoys in U.S. coastal waters until the 1840s.
The United States did not have a standard system of buoyage until 1848. Colors, shapes, and sizes varied from port to port. Contractors had free reign to decide the types of buoys necessary for a given area or harbor.
The lack of standardization caused problems for coastal pilots. When asked to comment on buoyage to Congress in 1850, they complained bitterly. Their most common complaint was that the buoys were so small, that to see them they had to run them down.
Records of buoys from this era are so lacking that a clear picture of U.S. buoys is difficult to piece together. Buoys were tended privately by contractors who relied on smallboats with limited lifting capability and sailing vessels with such limited maneuverability as to render the accurate placement of buoys impossible.
Contractors also supplied the buoys suggesting that they manufactured them according to the capability of their vessels. Buoys remained small and were of little use to local pilots, who relied on landmarks to establish their positions. Small buoys were particularly hazardous to inexperienced or unfamiliar mariners.
By 1846, Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker admitted that buoys placed by local authorities under loose regulations, coupled with the lack of standardized colors and numbers, were practically useless. Congress, sensitive to complaints about the ATON system, began taking steps to correct the problems in 1848. It adopted the Lateral System for implementation nationwide. It is from the Lateral System that the familiar "right, red, return" has its origin.
Here is the link:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbouys1.htm