114 MARINE LIGHTING EQUIPMENT OF THE PANAMA CANAL. 



Through the Culebra cut electric lights will be used, as planned by the army engi- 

 neers, also in the locks and the narrow portions of the 'canal, just as in ordinary 

 canal lighting. In the Gatun Lake and at the sea entrances of the canal the system 

 of buoys used will be the same as is used throughout the harbors and channels of 

 the United States, that is, high candle-power acetylene lighted buoys, placed from 

 half a mile to a mile apart, with spars or inferior buoys intervening. 



Commodore Miller : — I understood from this paper that it was devoted to 

 acetylene lighting, and that was the only type of lights to be used on the Panama 

 Canal. 



Mr. Walter F. Beyer (Communicated) : — Through the courtesy of Mr. James 

 Macfarlane, one of your members, I had the privilege of reading the advance copy 

 of a paper on "Marine Lighting Equipment of the Panama Canal," by Mr. James 

 Pattison, to be read at the twentieth general meeting of the Society of Naval Archi- 

 tects and Marine Engineers, held in New York, November 21 and 22, 191 2. 



Mr. Pattison's paper is interesting and illuminating in so far as it pertains to the 

 gas buoys adopted for the Panama Canal, and descriptions of the various mechan- 

 ical features which have made the use of compressed acetylene dissolved in acetone 

 safe and reliable for lighthouse purposes; but his introductory remarks are misleading 

 and give the impression that the illuminant for all the aids to navigation on the canal 

 will be compressed acetylene dissolved in acetone. 



Inasmuch as your Society has accepted Mr. Pattison's paper, and that it will 

 receive considerable publicity, it appears to me that the approved project for lighting 

 and buoying the canal should be placed before the members of your Society in the 

 nature of a criticism, in order to avoid misapprehension on the part of all concerned. 



On page loi Mr. Pattison fails to qualify his opening paragraph by stating the 

 illuminant to be used for the various lights, and on page 102 he fails to state that 

 Ambrose Channel and Delaware River Channel are only partly lighted by the 

 system of compressed acetylene dissolved in acetone. 



On page 103 he fails to stipulate that the final coats of paint for the exterior of 

 the buoys will be an anti-fouling paint for the salt water buoys and a special paint 

 which will resist the action of the waters in Gatun Lake for the fresh water buoys. 



A brief synopsis of the approved project follows. 



The Panama Canal consists of 23 tangents. Th^cheme of illumination includes 

 range lights to establish direction on aU the longer tangents while side lights, with 

 intermediate spar buoys one mile apart, mark the edge of the channel. The range 

 lights are omitted in Culebra Cut where their use is hardly practicable, and on 

 seven of the shorter tangents. 



The project also includes a light and fog signal station at the end of the West 

 Breakwater in Limon Bay, a light on the East Breakwater should it be built, and 

 gas and nun buoys lighting and marking the channel to Mount Hope Dry Dock at 

 Cristobal. 



