Thread: Beacon Lights: Souteast Alaska

Beacon Lights

Sunday, 1800. We are steaming through Wrangle Narrows. The first flakes of snow are falling; the first snow since I've been here. In small degrees the ship gently rolls from port to starboard, starboard to port and she moans sleepily. Distant creaks and bangs mumble through the ship and come to us here after knocking against bulkheads and passing through decks, then pass on. Ahead in the distance, port side, a green buoy light blinks and on the opposite shore, situated at the tip of a finger of land thrust into the narrow passage we are navigating, a red beacon light blinks. Everything else is in different shades of gray: light, dark, darker.
The sun has gone behind mountains, though it's diminishing light penetrates the settling fog and day has been left behind, quickly forgotten, and the view of outside is haunting and silent and solitary. Soon there is nothing but an opaque whiteness surrounding the vessel, glowing in the reflection of the running lights. From the bridge, the horn bellows deep and dark like something prehistoric and the message echoes, tumbling down through the night along the narrow corridor of rising black mountains and into obscurity. There is a deck-hand standing at the tip of the bow with a life jacket, gloves and a watchmen's cap on, a radio at his hip and binoculars raised to his eyes. Pirouetting frozen mist twists around him and he peers into the darkness looking for anything the ship should avoid: logs, ships, rocks, bodies, anything. The air horn sounds again, now repeating every few seconds, and I picture the ship opening a toothless mouth and yawning, the jawbones becoming unhinged and her huge mouth gapes grotesquely like the lip stretched maw of an old fish.
The engine room is on stand-by. The engineers sit in a circle of warmth in the control room drinking tea and coffee and telling stories. Christmas lights hang overhead in crazy loops from piping and ductwork and the magazine girls stuck to bulkheads look down, inviting cheer. And mechanical energy, electrical energy, compression and combustion, the clatter and vibration of machines and smell of diesel, the sea water pumping in (with small opalescent blue black mussells and shrimps with their scampering rows of legs and bobbling eyes), rushing through piping around the belly of the ship cooling engines and raging out the side in a torrent back to the ocean; the salmon beneath, the swaying giants in the black wood outside and the somnolent bear beneath rock and the slow arc of the crescent moon above with her diaspora of stars.
The ship is moving slowly at 6 or 8 knots. The propellers churn the oily black sea into eddying froth. The outside deck of the ship collects snow.
It is now completely dark save the occasional white or green or red navigation light blinking through the fog and we pass through space, into the night, steaming through a mystery. It is something ghostly in its sentient silence and eerie, stark. Light, like an eye, from a lighthouse sweeps the landscape briefly illuminating: a captain's warning. A fishing boat appears - a figure can be seen standing in the dimly lit wheelhouse - emerging through the fog and she quickly vanishes, leaving a gentle wake rippling and spreading out behind her.
I am sitting in the forward observation lounge of the ship, the lights are out and the windows span the width of the ship in an arc. Rows of seats run lengthwise, behind me someone snores, others are curled up in sleeping bags on the floor and a few of us sit up and look out into the blackness, looking.

Originally Posted by sailorguitar

Beacon Lights

Sunday, 1800. We are steaming through Wrangle Narrows. The first flakes of snow are falling; the first snow since I've been here. In small degrees the ship gently rolls from port to starboard, starboard to port and she moans sleepily. Distant creaks and bangs mumble through the ship and come to us here after knocking against bulkheads and passing through decks, then pass on. Ahead in the distance, port side, a green buoy light blinks and on the opposite shore, situated at the tip of a finger of land thrust into the narrow passage we are navigating, a red beacon light blinks. Everything else is in different shades of gray: light, dark, darker.
The sun has gone behind mountains, though it's diminishing light penetrates the settling fog and day has been left behind, quickly forgotten, and the view of outside is haunting and silent and solitary. Soon there is nothing but an opaque whiteness surrounding the vessel, glowing in the reflection of the running lights. From the bridge, the horn bellows deep and dark like something prehistoric and the message echoes, tumbling down through the night along the narrow corridor of rising black mountains and into obscurity. There is a deck-hand standing at the tip of the bow with a life jacket, gloves and a watchmen's cap on, a radio at his hip and binoculars raised to his eyes. Pirouetting frozen mist twists around him and he peers into the darkness looking for anything the ship should avoid: logs, ships, rocks, bodies, anything. The air horn sounds again, now repeating every few seconds, and I picture the ship opening a toothless mouth and yawning, the jawbones becoming unhinged and her huge mouth gapes grotesquely like the lip stretched maw of an old fish.
The engine room is on stand-by. The engineers sit in a circle of warmth in the control room drinking tea and coffee and telling stories. Christmas lights hang overhead in crazy loops from piping and ductwork and the magazine girls stuck to bulkheads look down, inviting cheer. And mechanical energy, electrical energy, compression and combustion, the clatter and vibration of machines and smell of diesel, the sea water pumping in (with small opalescent blue black mussells and shrimps with their scampering rows of legs and bobbling eyes), rushing through piping around the belly of the ship cooling engines and raging out the side in a torrent back to the ocean; the salmon beneath, the swaying giants in the black wood outside and the somnolent bear beneath rock and the slow arc of the crescent moon above with her diaspora of stars.
The ship is moving slowly at 6 or 8 knots. The propellers churn the oily black sea into eddying froth. The outside deck of the ship collects snow.
It is now completely dark save the occasional white or green or red navigation light blinking through the fog and we pass through space, into the night, steaming through a mystery. It is something ghostly in its sentient silence and eerie, stark. Light, like an eye, from a lighthouse sweeps the landscape briefly illuminating: a captain's warning. A fishing boat appears - a figure can be seen standing in the dimly lit wheelhouse - emerging through the fog and she quickly vanishes, leaving a gentle wake rippling and spreading out behind her.
I am sitting in the forward observation lounge of the ship, the lights are out and the windows span the width of the ship in an arc. Rows of seats run lengthwise, behind me someone snores, others are curled up in sleeping bags on the floor and a few of us sit up and look out into the blackness, looking.

Excellent description of where you are and what you experience. You put the reader right there on the ship with you.

How big is the vessel? I'm curious, although I don't think the information is necessary to your piece.

I'm gonna take a wild guess here. You loaded at Juneau, you're headed out to sea, and Petersburg is about an hour on your stern.

The vessel was a 400 foot Alaska Ferry boat. I think we loaded in Wrangle and were headed to Juneau. I can't remember if we went through Wrangle Narrows on the way to Wrangle or out of Wrangle. Petersburg was around there... Looking back, there were a-lot of details that I took for granted and didn't wtite down. Thanks for the feedback stonefly.