Lighthouse and warship (modern legend)

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The modern legend of a lighthouse and a warship goes back to collections of jokes and cartoons published in the early 1930s and has been circulating on the Internet since the 1990s.

Content and dissemination

The legend describes the communication between an aircraft carrier and a lighthouse . The crew of the warship requested a change of course for the lighthouse, which they thought was a ship on a collision course . The lighthouse keeper refused and the conversation escalated. The aircraft carrier, occasionally portrayed as the flagship of an entire fleet, increasingly threatened to demand a change of course. In the end, the commander of the warship threatened his entire fleet at sea and got the message back: “We are a lighthouse. Please come!"

Formally, the associated joke has been known since the 1930s. The first mentions were drawings, a conversation by megaphone between an officer and a lighthouse keeper was depicted, both are on the railing , due to fog or image detail, the difference between lighthouse and ship cannot be recognized at first. The modern legend has been spreading on the Internet since around 1995 and is often distributed as an actual transcript that has been approved by the US Chief of Naval Operations , for example .

The media fell for the story several times, such as Focus online in 2016.

example

A classic version looks like this:

"Enclosed the transcript of a radio communication on the coast of Newfoundland between a US warship and Canadian authorities in October 1995. The release of the data by the Chief of Naval Operations took place 10-10-95, confidentiality level free.

US Warship: Please steer 15 ° North to avoid a collision. Please come.
CDN: Recommend YOU steer 15 ° North to avoid a collision. Please come.
US warship: This is the commander of a US Navy battleship. I repeat, correct your course. Please come.
CDN: Repeat, you should correct your course. Please come.
US warship: We have under our command the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln , the second largest ship in the US Atlantic fleet . We are accompanied by three destroyers , cruisers and various support ships. We urge you to change your course immediately, otherwise we will take measures to secure our convoy .
CDN: This is Sergeant McNeill, I'm on top of a lighthouse. Please come."

The anecdote has been attributed to some aircraft carriers such as the Enterprise , Coral Sea as well as the Nimitz and the battleship Missouri . There are also Scottish or Irish variants, the ships are then occasionally assigned to the British Navy.

reception

The US Navy has its own website that explains the subject as a joke. That did n't stop Mike McConnell, as director of National Intelligence, from using it in a speech in 2008. Likewise, Isaac Asimov and Steven Covey recorded it in books. The story is often used as a metaphor for ineffective superiority as well as a lack of flexibility and great arrogance. In 2004 the Swedish marine company Silva used the process for an award-winning television advertisement.

For a variety of reasons, it's very unlikely that the story actually happened, but that hasn't hurt its popularity. Actual accidents involving ships with lighthouses or lightships are rare; the Elbow of Cross Ledge Light in New Jersey was hit once by ships and the Moreton Bay Pile Light in Australia was even hit several times. The US Coast Guard sees the anecdote as a common joke about the Navy. Technically, such conversations are very unlikely today because of the automation of the lighthouses. The lighthouses have no crews who could communicate with the ships by radio. In addition, according to the legend, the coast radio station (i.e. the lighthouse crew) does not communicate their own identification at the beginning of the conversation (and not in later radio messages), which contradicts actual practice.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Barbara Mikkelson : The Obstinate Lighthouse . Snopes.com . March 18, 2008. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  2. ↑ Lewis and Faye Copeland: 10,000 Jokes, Toasts and Stories . Garden City Books, New York, NY 1939, p. 692. , cited by Mikkelson.
  3. ↑ FOCUS Online: Satire: Curious radio duel between the US Navy and Spanish lighthouse keeper - video. Retrieved July 13, 2016 .
  4. ↑ “Focus Online” falls for an 85 year old joke - BILDblog. In: www.bildblog.de. Retrieved July 13, 2016 .
  5. ↑ a b The Lighthouse Joke. US Navy, September 2, 2009, accessed March 5, 2014 .
  6. ^ Scottish Humor, Real Life Stories . RampantScotland.com. Retrieved September 20, 2011.
  7. ^ Adrian Gostick, Scott Christopher: The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up . John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY December 29, 2010, ISBN 978-1-118-03941-0 , pp. 107-08 (accessed September 18, 2011).
  8. ↑ Mark Silva: DNI Mike McConnell: 'America hates spies' . In: Chicago Tribune , March 13, 2008. Archived from the original on September 24, 2011 Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved September 17, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.swamppolitics.com 
  9. ^ Isaac Asimov: Asimov Laughs Again . HarperCollins, March 11, 1992, ISBN 978-0-06-016826-1 , p. 119. , cited at Mikkelson.
  10. ↑ Stephen R. Covey : The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People . Simon & Schuster, 1989, ISBN 978-0-671-71117-7 , pp. 32-33. , cited at Mikkelson.
  11. ↑ Duncan: Silva Captain and the Lighthouse . The Inspiration Room. December 3, 2006. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  12. ^ Cannes Lions 2004 film price list ( Memento from June 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ Lisa Chadderdon: This Time, Consultants Are In The Dark . In: Fast Company , August 31, 1999. Archived from the original on May 28, 2011. Retrieved September 17, 2011. 
  14. ^ Gail Collins : A Black Hole Rating System . In: The New York Times , April 3, 2008. Retrieved September 20, 2011. 
  15. ↑ Mathew LoFiego: Classic Bilge: The Lighthouse vs. The Aircraft Carrier . Military Officers Association of America . March 29, 2009. Retrieved September 20, 2011.

Web links