And interestingly enough, all of these routes tend to converge right near the Massachusetts, New England Coast. And there was only about a thirty-mile gap between the eastbound and the west bound routes, which then fan out to these other destinations once clear of the American Coast. That was to ensure that everybody had an accurate position as they headed in towards the American mainland. Within a matter of moments, particularly in the area off of New England and out into the Atlantic, you could go from a beautiful cloudless day into something that prevented you from even seeing the bow of your own ship. When you go through the insurance records, you discover case after case after case of ships running one another down in fog, running into one another, running over small fishing vessels that happen to be in the way.
Fog is a very difficult thing from several standpoints.
And this sixth sense literally rescued, in some cases, ships from getting into collisions. You have captains just feeling that something was wrong and making a course correction and lo and behold there's, the ship that they almost hit. There was, of course, a series of regulations that dealt with speed and also with sounding your whistle, your foghorn during heavy fog. And even that was a real problem because fog changes the direction of the sound. It could actually serve as a blanket or a smothering agent or a dispersing agent so that although two ships might be approaching one another and they both sound their whistles, the fog can actually cause the perception of the sound to change in this direction.