Signals


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Posted by Ed Kiser on June 21, 2004 at 02:51:59 from 205.188.116.8 user Kisered.

Signalling

The characters in these beloved Ransome stories use an assortment
of methods to convey messages by some form of signalling. Such
methods include:

Morse Code
Semaphore
Signal flags from the crosstrees of a ship
Pigeons
Special meanings for a triangle and square (WH only)
Rockets (SW only) (could mean wrong thing to wrong people)
A ship's horn
A fog horn
A clanging bell
Even banging on a frying pan...
Susan's whistle
Chinese Whistlers, using their own codes, not Morse
A wet shirt, held by hand to flutter in the breeze (in the Wade)
Smoke signals
A flashing light from lightship or lighthouse
An imitation owl (or duck) call
A pigeon pushing through wires activating a door bell on a tin tray
Hunting horns or coach horns of the firefighters
A cannon to announce the start of the race
A white flag, meaning, I surrender
A flag from the pole on the Beckfoot promentory, meaning 2 things
And of course, the telephone and telegraph...


There are 336 lines in the 12 books that contain the word,
"signal" or its variants. Every story uses those words.

It seems that WH is the primary book where signalling becomes the
thing to do and to learn, partly because of the absence of Nancy
and the need to communicate with her, but its importance seemed
to be felt even before her illness made communication difficult.

Even the D's very first meeting with the others had to do with
"Signallying to Mars" which did not convey all that much
information, mainly because they could not understand "Martian"
as being a kind of foreign language. The others at Holly Howe
tried to flash back in Morse, but the D's were unable to make
sense out of that, although Dick did say that it was Morse they
were using.

The very first time the D's even saw the others is when they were
in a boat having left part of the group on the island, and the
others still in the boat were a short way North of the island,
with the two groups experimenting with signallying back and forth
to each other. Even here however, they were still within
shouting distance, so the signalling was not a requirement, only
an experiment. They used two forms of signalling, one with a
single flag, used to "wigwag" Morse code, and the other using a
pair of flags to signal with semaphore codes.

In WH chapter 5 is the description of how Nancy uses a single
flag to perform the Morse code:

Nancy gave Dick and Dorothea their first lesson in
flag-flapping and showed them how to make a short flap for a dot
and a long sweep from side to side for a dash.

In PP CH25, as the young ones, having escaped from the cave
in from within the mine, were coming over the top of the
mountain to rejoin the others, who were very distressed at
their absence. Nancy signals back to them using this method
of single flag Morse, which is also described as:

Nancy was flicking a handkerchief to and fro, sometimes
in a wide sweep from side to side, sometimes in a short flick
above her head.

This description does not quite agree with the method that was
taught when I was in the Boy Scouts (USA), where we were told to
hold the flag, centered, in front of your face, then one swish to
the sender's right and back to the center position was a DOT, and
one swish to the sender's left and back to the center position
was a DASH. RIGHT=DOT. LEFT=DASH. This seems somewhat unlike
what Nancy is described as using. This difference in the DOT and
DASH methods has made me wonder, why is there this difference?
Are we looking at USA vs. UK type difference, or is this 1932 vs
1947 style differences?

Upon meeting the D's in WH, Nancy felt it was very necessary for
them to learn how to signal properly, and wrote in Dick's
notebook the codes both for Morse and for the two-flag Semaphore
systems. It struck me odd that the illustrations show the
Semaphore page of Dick's book, but never show any of the Morse
codes anywhere. The only real use of Morse in WH was when the
D's had finally arrived at the North Pole, and they dug out his
notebook to look up the proper Morse code for the letters, "NP",
to signal to whomever might happen to see it and understand,
with no real knowledge that their signals would be seen. Nancy
did happen to be looking north from Beckfoot, and was quite
elated to suddenly recognize that someone was sending in Morse
the NP letters, and understood immediately that it meant that the
D's were already up there at the Pole. So that Morse code
business really helped.

In another situation in WH, the signalling became ambiguous and
led to a major misunderstanding, when Nancy told Dick a Flag at
Beckfoot means "go to the North Pole", and then told the others
much later, that it was to mean that she was coming to council to
finalize the plans for the push to the pole. There the signal,
the flag at Beckfoot, had two meanings, and produced the
confusions with the two sets of observers as to the meaning of
that coded signal.

There were practice sessions in WH using Morse at the tarn where
they were also practicing with their ice skates. The D's did
some practice at the kitchen table at Dixon's to try to learn the
Morse codes. They never seemed to feel that they had actually
learned it, as when they wanted to send NP from the North Pole,
Dick had to look up those codes from his notebook, rather than
trust his memory. Having to receive a signal, then take the time
to go through a list in a notebook to look up what character that
code belongs to, is not a good way to communicate, because while
looking up one letter, you miss seeing the next dozen, and so
miss the message. The others seemed to be much more proficient
at understanding Morse and Semaphore as well.

Nancy did consider that Morse code, using a flashing light, could
be used to communicate between the barn observatory above Dixon's
and the promentory by Beckfoot, which was quite a considerable
distance. She felt such could be done, at night, with a flashing
light. Such signalling was never attempted, as the D's did not
have the sufficient skill to make it happen. It would have been
a neat performance to have that communication made over such a
distance however.

The two-flag Semaphore system was used by "pumpkin head" Nancy as
she signalled from her sick room window to the others in the
yard, until her Mother stopped her and fussed at them all for
even being on that side of the lake.

The Semaphore system was used by Nancy on her written notes by
the row of dancing stick figures waving their arms about. It
took the others a bit to figure out that this was a Semaphore
code, and a bit more before they figured out to read it
backwards. The D's answer, with two stick figures, with one hand
down and the other directly over head, which is the signal for
"D", told Nancy that the D's were to stay in the FRAM, a
Semaphore signal with a coded cryptic meaning.

This same mode of a written message with stick figures dancing
madly waving their arms about in semaphore patters to convey the
meaning of the message was also used by Nancy in SW as she said
"Three Million Cheers", a message that although was translated,
was too cryptic as to its significance, leaving the Swallows
puzzled as to her intent.

In Pigeon Post, Morse was used by Roger to signal with a
flashlight when he and John had taken their sleeping bags to the
gulch for security purposes, and he said "goodnight" back to the
base camp using his flashlight.

Also in PP, a series of scouts spaced at intervals were able to
keep watch as to the whereabouts of Squashy Hat, signalling down
the line of scouts to the miners in the Gulch to tell them of his
movements.

In Swallowdale, John was on top of the watchtower rock, and
noticed that he could see Holly Howe from there. He thought that
it would even be possible for him to signal to Mother and Bridget
back across the lake, but they never did attempt such a trick.
There was the important requirement that Mother get to hear from
them essentially each day, to be reassured that all was well, so
they pressed Mary into service to carry the Native Mail to Holly
Howe with their simple written notes of assurances.

I have always been a bit disappointed with John for not pursuing
that idea any further. It would have allowed two-way
communication that was immediate, with no time delay for the hand
carrying of written notes in a rowboat. If only they had agreed
on a particular time for both ends to be looking at the proper
place after dark, and they could have flashed to each other their
assurances and any other news they wished. Now that would have
been a neat use of signal lights over quite a distance and would
have expedited a communications problem quite well, but they
never bothered to make it happen. It was such a good chance to
make something like this work, but nobody bothered to pursue that
idea even after John originally thought of it. Although it was
never explicitly stated that Mother could use Morse, the fact
that John did consider that possibility seems to suggest that she
had the skill to perform her half of the communication. They
really missed a great opportunity to do some long distance
communications via Morse.

In the Swallowdale story, the Swallows are in their climb up the
mountain and make camp part way up. Susan signals with her
whistle, giving the sound of two short blasts and one long one
(Morse for "U") which is supposed to mean, "You are standing into
danger" so Roger, who knew that meaning, came running back to see
what sort of danger he was in, to find out that he was in danger
from Susan if he did not get to bed properly. This particular
usage was not so much Morse as it was a signal that a ship's horn
would use to warn a nearby ship, but being raised as good
sailors, Roger understood the meaning.

Morse code came in handy in another one of the stories, in ML,
when CF was a prisoner below decks on a Chinese pirate ship, and
he was able to communicate to the others and they with him by
TAPPING in Morse. This was a great place for using such a mode
of communications, where they could not see each other, but could
hear each other's tapping.

Nancy did use Morse from a mountain top in GN, although Peggy
grumbled about it a bit, and wished she had used semaphore
instead. Roger was able to signal from his lookout post as he
kept watch.

------------

It was reading these Ransome stories, and seeing them use Morse,
even in their limited ways, that prompted me to learn it myself.
There is when I discovered that his stories did not give me the
definition of the Morse codes; I had to go look them up
elsewhere. But his stories motivated me, and I made those codes
mine. My enthusiasm spread to my friends, and thus to our Boy
Scout Troup, where it became quite a popular activity to practice
this process.

During my Boy Scout days, a good friend lived on the street
behind me, but a few houses down. His bedroom at the rear on the
second floor was visible to me from my second floor rear bedroom
window. It became a most delightful "thing" to flash lights to
each other in our bedrooms, well after we were supposed to be
asleep. Perhaps the sneaky part of doing something while
supposedly being asleep added to the fun. It was something of a
prideful accomplishment for us to be able to talk to each other
in this way. It also helped cement a very special friendship.
We could communicate.

Just last year, I made a presentation on Morse Code signalling to
our local Boy Scout troop sponsored by my church, and it fell
flat. They seemed to think it so quaint. "Why not use a cell
phone?" Wait until their battery dies... I was totally unable
to make a dent. I guess the thought of actually having to
MEMORIZE anything just was a big turn off. I was so hoping to
find some of that same enthusiasm I had found in that old troop
55 years ago, when we eagerly embraced the concept, and
diligently applied ourselves to learning and using the code, but
was left high and dry and ignored as if I was something that had
just crawled out from under a rock.

But then, you see, these people had never read Ransome, and never
learned the importance of communication via various modes of
signalling. They have really missed out on so much...

----------

A footnote here:

If anyone is interested, send me a personal EMAIL requesting my
MORSE CODE PACKAGE, and I will REPLY with a ZIP attachment
containing the info on learning MORSE along with special software
that I wrote myself to provide practice and help in learning how
to both send and receive, with you adjusting the settings that
control the speeds of the transmission to suit your skill level.
Learning Morse can be an easy process if only you can be shown
how to make it simple - and with practice to get your skills to a
better level. It is memorization made easy. It can be a lot of
fun, and a satisfying skill. Ask, and you shall receive. It is
the same package I prepared for the local Scouts that went
nowhere...

EMAIL ID:

kisered@aol.com

Ed Kiser, South Florida



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