A Port Light is Red and a Starboard Light is Green. So What Is a Blue Light?

 Every boater knows the first half. Red is port, the left side of the boat. Green is starboard, right side. White rides high as the masthead light and astern as the stern light. Each sidelight throws its color over a 112.5-degree arc, from dead ahead to just behind the beam — so a vessel approaching at night can read, from color alone, which way you are heading and which side of you it is seeing. The system is simple, and it has saved more lives than any other invention in boating.

Port red and starboard green side navigation lights.

But here is the puzzle that stops visitors in our showroom cold. If green means starboard, why do so many antique starboard lanterns have deep blue lenses? Here's the answer!

When the British Steam Navigation Act of 1846 formalized the color-coded system of red for port (left) and green for starboard (right) to prevent collisions — the Admiralty regulations that followed in 1848 required steam vessels to show them — the physics of early lighting posed a serious challenge. Pure green glass severely dampened the low-intensity light of candle or oil flames. Consequently, antique starboard lanterns from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were purposefully fitted with deep blue curved lenses. To an observer on a modern dock, the unlit artifact appears strikingly blue; however, to a 19th-century sailor looking through the midnight fog, it glowed an unmistakable green.

An early 20th century starboard light with cobalt blue Fresnel lens.

In maritime history, blue Fresnel lenses serve a fascinating optical purpose: they were primarily engineered to produce green starboard navigation lights. Because early ships relied on oil, whale oil, or kerosene lamps, the light source emitted a warm, yellowish-orange flame. Passing this yellow light through standard green glass resulted in a dim, muddy, or unrecognizable color at sea. To solve this, marine manufacturers utilized a deep cobalt or sapphire blue glass Fresnel lens. The subtractive color mixing of the yellow light source passing through the rich blue glass filter effectively produced a distinct, piercing green beam that could be easily seen at night, from a ship miles away. But if you observe the blue lens with a white background light, it will be viewed as it's natural blue color.

Skipjack Nautical Wares 

1172 State Route 32, Round Pond, ME 04564. Seasonal showroom hours from late spring to the end of October; year-round by appointment. Webstore always open. Call us at (207) 219-0897.

WWII US Liberty Ship Hatch Cover Nautical Coffee Table

 

This Liberty ship hatch cover coffee table displayed in a living room. this table
is unique with the scrolling wrought iron base and legs.

The Liberty ships were the workhorses of World War II — some 2,751 of them built in American yards between 1941 and 1945, each one ferrying the tanks, trucks, and munitions that kept the Allies moving. Above every cargo hold sat heavy wooden hatch covers: thick yellow pine planks banded in steel, made to be lifted off by crane, built to take weather and weight for a whole crossing.The top of this coffee table is one of those hatch covers.

A WWII Liberty ship hatch cover, remade into a sturdy
coffee table.

In the 1970s, someone gave that authentic WWII-era hatch cover a second life as a table. The thick three-board yellow pine top, with its wide metal band ends, is fitted onto an iron base that is screwed into the bottom — and the base lifts off for moving or storage. That base is fashioned from flat, wide strips of metal, hammered into intricate scrolling legs: a craftsman's flourish on a piece of working cargo gear. The wood carries a dark walnut patina under a high-gloss resin finish, with one small repaired spot on the end of one of the metal bands (see the close-up image on the listing) — left honest, as it should be.

Metal repair to one corner of an end band.

It measures 27 inches wide, 59 inches long, and 20-1/2 inches tall, and weighs about 120 pounds. A substantial piece in every sense — real ship's gear, real weight, real history. The WWII US Liberty Ship Hatch Cover Nautical Coffee Table is $1,275 — listed now on our webstore, one in stock:

See it in person at 1172 State Route 32, Round Pond, ME 04564. Seasonal hours through October 31: Thu–Sat 11–4, Sun 1–4, Mon 11–4; year-round by appointment after that. Webstore always open. (207) 219-0897.

A Whaler's Sea Chest From the Collection of Henry Alexander Murray

 A sailor's sea chest was one of his most important possessions — on a long voyage it held everything he owned, and served as his table, his chair, his bank, and his bureau. Most were plain and utilitarian. The chest now in our webstore is something else entirely: a mid-19th-century decorated six-board sea chest, American, probably New England, that is exceptional in both construction and decoration.

Top of the sea chest lid with painted whaling scene.

The chest is built of white pine with nailed joints and a canted front and back. The single-board top carries tooled molded edges and applied end cleats — structural details added to keep the lid true against warping. The top hangs on snipe hinges, an early forged-iron form made from cotter-pin-like pieces driven through the top and the chest back, their hooked ends interlacing to form the hinge itself.

White pine was used to build this sea chest. Closeup view of one
of the snipe hinges, fastening the top to the chest.

The lid's exterior carries a colorful panoramic painting of a dramatic whaling chase scene, enclosed within a painted rope border that follows the lid's rectangular outline. Lift the lid and the underside is left in natural pine, bearing a painted silhouette of a black sperm whale backed by a crossed whaler's harpoon and oar. 

View of the interior lid with black silhouette painting of a whale
with crossed harpoons.

The chest's exterior is painted olive green. Inside, a ditty box (till) is fastened in the upper right with a single drawer and an open cavity below. 

The interior till (ditty box) with lower drawer.

And in a detail collectors will appreciate: the original leather-wrapped beckets survive, with their painted-wood side cleats, and the original lock remains in place (the key is missing).

Original leather-wrapped rope becket sea chest handle with 
green-painted side cleat.

Dimensions: 39 3/4 inches wide, 18 1/2 inches deep, 17 1/4 inches high.

Painted chests come to market regularly; chests with a period whaling chase scene on the lid, original beckets intact, and an undisturbed ditty box do not. This is a rarity in the survival sense — a decorated whaler's chest where everything that should have survived, did.

PROVENANCE: The chest came from the personal collection of Henry Alexander Murray (1893–1988) — Harvard psychologist, leading authority on Herman Melville, twice president of the Melville Society, whose collection of Melville books, manuscripts, and artifacts was donated to the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A man who spent a career inside Melville's world owned this chest, and that ownership is what moves it into a different tier. We price it at $6,250 — above comparable decorated chests — because the Murray provenance, combined with the piece's physical rarity, puts it in museum-quality territory. There is one, and only ever one, of these.

See the full listing and photographs on our webstore:https://www.skipjackmarinegallery.com/a-mid-19th-century-whalers-personal-sea-chest-with-painted-whaling-chase-scene.html — $6,250, one in stock.

Visit us at 1172 State Route 32, Round Pond, ME 04564. Open year-round, Thu–Sat 11–4, Sun 1–4, Mon 11–4, and by appointment. (207) 219-0897

The Clock That Marked the Watches: A 1944 Chelsea Ship's Bell Clock

There is a sound that means "ship" the way no other sound does. Not the foghorn, not the gull — the bell. For centuries, a ship's bell marked time in four-hour watches, eight bells for the changing of the guard at 4, 8, and 12. This week's piece carries that sound in its bones.

It's an authentic World War II ship's bell clock, built in 1944 by the Chelsea Clock Company of Boston for the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. of Chester, Pennsylvania — ordered at the very height of America's wartime shipbuilding surge. The matching serial numbers, 451054, date it precisely to that year.

Look closely, and the war is written into the materials. The case is zinc, not brass — brass was going to the war effort, so military clocks got the standard wartime zinc case. The bezel is Bakelite. The 6-inch silvered brass dial carries bold Arabic numerals swept by classic blued steel hands, with the fast/slow adjustment just below the 12. The hinged bezel opens on the left with a thumbscrew lock, and three bulkhead mounting holes on the back flange tell you exactly where this clock lived: bolted to a bulkhead, keeping a ship's time. It measures 7 inches across, 3½ inches deep, and weighs a hefty 7.7 pounds. It comes with its winding key.

A WWII Chelsea ship's bell clock
from the Francis J. Trainor Maritime Collection.

The condition report is an honest one, the way we like them: the clock runs and keeps perfect time. The bell strike wants adjusting to ring properly — and there's a small piece of paper attached to the back noting the last service date: August 2001. Twenty-five years ago, someone cared for this clock. Now it's waiting for its next caretaker.

Here's why it belongs in a coastal home: a ship's bell clock is the rare object that is both instrument and sculpture. Hang it in the entryway and it greets you with purpose. Put it on the mantel or the study wall and the whole room steadies around it. Guests will ask about it. You'll have a story — a real one, with a serial number and a shipyard and a war in it.

From the Francis J. Trainor Maritime Collection

One of one, as always: when it's gone, it's gone.

WWII Chelsea Ship's Bell Clock — $925.00. See it here: Chelsea Clock

Visit us at our skipjack showroom — 1172 State Route 32, Round Pond, Maine. 

(207) 219-0897.

Seasonal showroom hours through the end of October: 

Thu–Sat 11–4, Sun 1–4, Mon 11–4; open year-round by appointment.  The webstore never closes.