Leading lights

Range lights in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The red and white striped panels are one of tweleve color combinations of daymarks which may be used on range lights in the United States.

A pair of leading lights in Bremerhaven, Germany, with the rear light in a proper lighthouse and the front light on a smaller tower. No standardised markings are used here.

Doubling Point Range Lights on NOAA chart 13296.

Leading lights (also known as range lights in the United States) are a pair of light beacons, used in navigation to indicate a safe passage for vessels entering a shallow or dangerous channel; and may also be used for position fixing. At night, the lights are a form of leading line that can be used for safe navigation. The beacons consist of two lights that are separated in distance and elevation, so that when they are aligned, with one above the other, they provide a bearing.

Leading lights are often confused with lighthouses, as they are often built to look like lighthouse structures. In contrast to lighthouses which warn offshore navigators of dangers upon landfall and can be used for offshore navigation, leading lights assist the inshore navigation of ships, vessels and other watercraft into safe channels, lanes, or port, and harbour entrances.

In some cases the two beacons are unlighted, in which case they are known as a Range in the United States or a Transit in the UK. The beacons may be artificial or natural.

Operation

Two lights are positioned in front of one another. One, known as the front light, is lower than the one behind, which is referred to as the rear light. At night when viewed from a ship, the two lights only become aligned vertically when a vessel is positioned on the correct bearing. If the vessel is on an incorrect course, the lights will not line up.

During the day, the lights may not easily be seen and therefore leading lights are often fitted with secondary visual aids, e.g. huge red flags with thick black lines running down them. When both red flags and black lines line up, the navigator will know that the vessel is on the correct bearing. The structures themselves are usually painted to make the structure more prominent.

Some major rivers, such as the Elbe River in Germany, have a series of leading lines. Each time it is necessary to make a turn, the navigator lines up the next pair of leading lights. This provides guidance from Hamburg to the sea, using successive pairs of leading lights.

The first set of range lights in the United States were privately established by subscription at Newburyport Harbor in Massachusetts in 1788. The technology was first used in Europe in 1837, where the term leading lights originates.

Leading lights are sometimes designed to be movable, allowing their position to be shifted in the event of a change in the safe channel; one station which used such technology in the United States was the pair at Hilton Head, South Carolina. The original Chatham Light also formed a range that was movable.

See also

• Daymark