A guide through the fog
An iconic sound in St. John’s, the foghorn can be a lifeline for mariners
For some residents of St. John’s, the low, consistent drone of the foghorn resounding from Fort Amherst is simply one more nuisance during the bad weather that sets it off.
But for Mark Hiscock, of traditional Newfoundland band Shanneyganock, who was born and raised in Fort Amherst, that sound carries a different meaning altogether.
As Hiscock puts it, “There could be someone out in an open boat saying, ‘Thank God, I can hear the foghorn,’ (and) at the same time somebody in the city is going, ‘My God, I wish they’d shut that off.’”
Fort Amherst is a beautiful, quaint spot to live, where everybody knows each other, and many are related, he said.
“It’s a little outport right in St. John’s,” Hiscock said.
However, despite how close the residents are to the noise, it’s not as loud as one might suspect.
“Down in the community, we hardly even hear it,” he said. “You hear it faintly because it’s facing out to sea.”
That sound is triggered by the conditions of the atmosphere and can inspire different feelings and thoughts, depending on the circumstances.
Some nights, when the temperature is right, Hiscock will open his window.
“It almost puts you to sleep, the sound of it,” he said.
“It's almost a soothing thing if I'm not on top of it like the people renting the houses out by the lighthouse.”
Other evenings, it can be eerie.
“If you're standing out on the roadway in the middle of the night and you're looking out (to sea) and it's black, thick with fog, and you hear the foghorn, it's eerie too at the same time.”
The Fort Amherst foghorn is one of 17,000 floating, fixed and electronic aids to navigation, an email from the Canadian Coast Guard said.
“The foghorn at the Fort Amherst light station in St. John's sounds when visibility is less than two nautical miles; it can be heard two nautical miles away,” the email said. “Its pattern is a two-second blast, followed by 18 seconds of silence. This pattern repeats until visibility improves to more than two nautical miles.”
Hiscock owns an 18-foot open boat, which he uses for fishing when the time is right. That's when the foghorn can really be significant.
“If you're out at sea and you're in a small open boat and you don't have any radar, the fog can drop down on top of you in minutes,” he said. “Before you know it, you're out and surrounded by this fog and you don't have a clue where you are. So, you pay attention, and you listen for the foghorn and you make your way slowly back to the entrance of the harbour and eventually the land opens up and there you are, you're back in St. John's.”
Though the foghorn has been automated since the early 1980s — it now runs on solar panels and a battery bank — it still needs to be maintained.
Charles Newman is a technical maintenance planner co-ordinator with a branch of the Canadian Coast Guard called Maritime and Civil Infrastructure (MCI).
In an interview that took place inside the lighthouse to get away from the harsh wind, Newman said the foghorn is one of many aids to navigation MCI maintains. There are also 2.9-metre bell buoys and 2.9-metre whistle buoys, which resound as they bob up and down with the waves.
“I was recently in Port aux Basques … (and) I was out in the evening and just coming back from supper and all you could hear was ‘clang,' just like church bells, and that was going all night long,” Newman said. “Some people enjoy it. It's the sound of home for someone who's been away. For fisherman, that's what they want to hear.”
Though a lot of the new boats have GPS, there are still mariners who travel in vessels that are less modernized.
“It's a very important job, of course, because of the safety of life at sea,” he said.
“Our mandate is to provide aids to navigation for the mariner. So, until that changes, all our sites will be up and running and we will provide sounds for the mariner.”