TALKING WITH LIGHT: Navy Signalman “A” School

The summer I learned that a message does not need a radio to cross the water

In the summer of 1984, the United States Coast Guard sent me to the U.S. Naval Training Center in Orlando, Florida, to learn how to communicate without using a radio.

We used flags.

We used semaphore.

We used flashing light.

And we learned to do it accurately, because a message at sea is only useful if the person on the other ship receives the same message you intended to send.

That summer at Navy Signalman “A” School gave me a set of skills that seemed very old even then. Satellites were already circling overhead. Ships had sophisticated radio rooms. The military had secure communications systems that would have looked like science fiction to the signalmen of an earlier generation.

But light still traveled across the water. Flags could still be seen. And sometimes the oldest method available was exactly the right one.

A Coast Guardsman in a Navy School

I wanted to be a Coast Guard Quartermaster, not a Navy Signalman.

The title “Quartermaster” confuses people outside the sea services because, in the Army, quartermasters are associated with supply. A Coast Guard Quartermaster of my era belonged on the bridge. We were Masters of the Quarterdeck. We worked with charts, navigation, piloting, steering, watches, weather and the other information needed to know where the ship was, where it was going and how it was going to get there safely.

Visual communications also belonged in our world.

The Navy still had Signalman as a separate rating in 1984. Navy Signalmen specialized in the visual side of shipboard communications: flaghoist, semaphore, flashing-light Morse, message handling and the procedures that allowed ships to exchange information without saying a word over the radio.

The Coast Guard expected its Quartermasters to know those jobs, too. So off I went to Orlando to learn them from the Navy.

There is something wonderfully interservice about showing up in a Coast Guard uniform at a Navy school. We were all sailors, but not quite the same kind of sailors. The Navy had its customs, its terminology and its way of doing things. The Coast Guard had ours. I was there to learn their specialty and bring it back to my service.

Also, it was Orlando in the summer.

People hear “Orlando” and think of vacations, amusement parks and air-conditioned hotel rooms. I remember heat, humidity, Navy training and the distinct understanding that nobody had sent me there to meet Mickey Mouse.

Learning a Language You Can See

Visual signaling is deceptively simple when somebody demonstrates it slowly.

Semaphore uses two handheld flags positioned at different angles to represent letters and other signals. It looks almost graceful when an experienced signalman does it. Then you pick up the flags yourself and discover that your arms have apparently forgotten how angles work.

Flaghoist has its own vocabulary and procedures. A group of signal flags flying from a halyard is not decoration. It can identify a ship, convey a maneuver, issue an instruction, report a condition or communicate an entire standardized meaning to every ship that can see it.

Flashing light uses Morse code, but instead of hearing dots and dashes through a speaker, you see short and long flashes of light across the water.

I already knew Morse. My fascination with radio had begun when I was a kid, and Morse code had been part of that world for years. But recognizing a few characters and handling an official military message are two very different levels of proficiency.

At Signalman school, the message had structure. It had a proper form. It had a preamble, an address, the text itself and the procedural material needed to move it correctly. The receiving station had to know when the message began, who it was for, what it said and when it was complete. If something was missed or copied incorrectly, there were procedures for that, too.

This was not waving flags and blinking a lamp until the other ship seemed to get the general idea.

It was communications discipline.

The lesson was the same one I would encounter again and again throughout my Coast Guard career and, years later, in emergency communications: the equipment carries the information, but procedure makes the information useful.

Accuracy Before Speed

Learning Morse by flashing light requires your brain to perform several jobs at once.

You watch the lamp. You recognize the pattern. You turn that pattern into a character. You put the character in the right place. Then you immediately clear enough mental space for the next one, because the person sending the message is not going to stop while you admire the letter you just copied.

Sending creates the opposite problem. You begin with the character in your head, translate it into dots and dashes, and control the light with the proper rhythm. A dot cannot become a dash because your hand lingered. A space cannot disappear because you rushed. The operator on the other end has only the light you give him.

That is why the training involved repetition.

You learn the symbols. You learn the procedures. You practice until the movements and patterns stop being a collection of individual steps and begin to flow as one skill.

There is always a temptation in communications training to become impressed by speed. Speed feels like mastery. But a fast, wrong message is simply an error delivered efficiently.

The goal was accuracy first. Speed followed.

I was good at it.

Actually, I was very good at it.

I graduated at the top of my Signalman “A” School class.

I remain proud of that. Military schools do not give you first place because you are charming, and I am reasonably certain they did not grade on Brooklynese. I learned the material, passed the tests, practiced the skills and earned the standing.

More importantly, I left Orlando able to do the job.

When the Captain Needed a Message Sent

A schoolhouse skill can feel perfectly solid while you are using it every day. Then time passes. You move on to other duties. You stand different watches, solve different problems and use other communications systems.

The skill remains somewhere in your head, but it gets rusty.

Around 1986, while I was serving aboard USCGC TAMAROA, we needed to send a message by flashing light.

We got the proper message form and gave it to the captain. He wrote what he wanted to say. We filled in the heading, the preamble, the postamble and the other procedural parts that turned his words into a message ready for transmission.

Then I went to the signal light and began sending it.

This was the real thing—not another practice group in an Orlando classroom. Another vessel was out there, and the captain expected his message to arrive correctly.

My Morse had become rusty because I had not used it regularly for a couple of years. At one point, I blanked on a character. I think it was a U, although the fact that I am no longer entirely certain which letter it was probably proves the point.

A Radioman was standing beside me. Radiomen also learned Morse because they monitored the continuous-wave emergency frequencies. I hesitated, attempted to reconstruct the character out loud and he supplied what I needed.

Then I kept sending.

Was that the triumphant demonstration one imagines from the man who graduated first in his Signalman class?

Well…mostly.

It was also an excellent demonstration of why ships have crews.

Training matters. Practice matters. So does having another qualified person beside you when one small piece of your brain decides to go out for coffee at exactly the wrong moment.

The message went out by flashing light.

No satellite. No repeater. No internet. No talkgroup. Just a trained operator, a signal lamp and another ship across the water.

Old Skills Are Not Dead Skills

Visual signaling belongs to a much older maritime tradition than the radios and digital networks I use today. That does not make it a museum piece.

A signal lamp does not care whether the radio room has power. A flaghoist does not need an encryption key. Semaphore does not depend on a network server. Each method has obvious limitations—you need visibility, range and someone watching—but within those limitations, it works.

That is one of the reasons I have always been drawn to communications systems. No single system is perfect. Each one offers a path, and a capable communicator learns more than one path.

Today, I may use a BridgeCom Maverick and a HamSpot 5 to talk with someone on the other side of the world. I use APRS to exchange position reports and messages. I can reach linked repeaters and digital networks that would have been unimaginable when I stood in Orlando learning to move two flags through the alphabet.

The technology is different. The underlying discipline is not.

Know your equipment. Use the correct procedure. Send the message accurately. Make sure the other station understands it. And remember that the purpose of every lamp, flag, radio, computer and network is to move information from one human being to another.

In 1984, the Navy taught a young Coast Guard Quartermaster how to talk with light.

More than forty years later, I still think that is pretty remarkable.