Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-12-24
FUGITIVE SPAR BUOYS
Rescuing These Stray Sticks
 Is Perilous Work.
SlGNBOARDS OF CHANNELS.

How These Mariners Guides Arc An
 chored and How They Sometimes
 Break Away and Are Hunted Down
 by the Lighthouse Service Tenders.
 When the winter gales begin to blow, the tenders of the lighthouse service turn their stems toward northern seas to hunt stray spar buoys. Of all the work of the coast patrol this, perhaps, is the most exposed to danger. Pulling these "signboards" out of the sea or putting them over side is like ''yank- ing spiles with a ton derrick on heaving platform.
 Although passengers in the boats that ply the waters of New York har- terways along the coast see many spar buoys, they give them little thought With the man at the wheel it is different. Color, shape and size give him volumes of information, and he looks upon the spar buoy as an in- valuable guide.
 In the government inventories they are listed as sticks" although they are sometimes sixty feet long. They are anchored in the bed of river or harbor channel, their up ends" paint ed fin such a way as to indicate to the observer the formation of the bottom. On the margin of government charts explanatory notes tell one that vessels approaching a harbor from the sea should leave red buoys with even numbers on the right and black, with odd numbers on the left side of chan nels. Black and white striped buoys, the stripes running perpendicularly mean an obstruction in the channel, with room to get by on either side. If balls or cages ornament the up ends" 1t means turning point, the color and number indicating the course.
 These sticks are put down with heavy iron anchors and sometimes great stone weights. One would suppose that so fixed they never could get away, but they do, and 1t is a job to find them. Ice foes break their cables and some times crush the sticks; storms pull them loose, and ships in the fog or darkness foul them and tear them from their hold on the bottom. Not infre- quently ships use them as moorings, although this is forbidden.
 There are instances where the an chors of spar buoy have been secure enough to hold against ice pressure and in narrow channel cause dangerous jam. But such cases are few, for when this happens the weight of the ice usually becomes so great as to force the buoy under, and the pack slides OD.
 If the ice pack gets under the buoy 30 as to lift 1t there is only one result the parting of the cable. Then off starts the spar upon journey maybe of thousands of miles, perhaps of only nearest shore. and it may drift to the coast of Europe or into the southern seus. On the Irish coast today Is one which travelled there in six weeks from New York harbor. It was presented to the British government by the Unit ed States and now floats off the coast on which it stopped after Its long At lsntic journey.
 If 1t is a long chase to find the stray buoys 1t Is even more difficult task to recover the anchors left behind by the fugitive spars. Tenders that sail out of the harbor have derrick and tackle rigged in front of the pilot house, with a donkey engine to lift and pull. The location of every buoy is marked on the charts to degree. so it is not diff cult to find the desired position. The serious business is dragging for the anchor and after grappling with it to hoist 1t aboard ship. Here the donkey engine comes into play. Another haz- ard is to pull a spar buoy aboard. If sea happens to be running the captain of the tender has to use extreme care. Should a big roller get under him and suddenly tighten the lifting chains either they would give way or the weight would come up too fast. the crew in either case being placed in jeopardy of their lives.
 But the risk these men run is all in the days work. To them a job in seaway on a lee shore Is regarded as no more monotonous task than repaint. ing a row of buoys on land.-New York Post