NAUTOPHONE’S BLAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1940, Page 3

NAUTOPHONE’S BLAST

WHOLE TOWN AWAKENED. EAST LONDON'S NEW FOGHORN. East London beach front residents shot up- in the air when a shrill siren blast pierced the silence. They were sure there was going to be an air raid. The noise, however, was merely the nautophone—East London's new foghorn. Fog had settled and the nautophone was going into action for the first time.

It kept it up the entire night, right, right through to morning, and residents, tossing sleeplessly, had plenty of lime to allow excitement to give place to indignation. Phone calls showered on the officials responsible for the cacophony. A nursing home telephoned and demanded that the noise bo stopped.

But residents have been bhinily (old Hint they will have to get used io it. The nautophone is now part of the vital equipment of the port. In fact. East London should have had a foghorn long ago. Had there been a foghorn a couple of years ago the liner Stuart Star might not have run on the rocks a few yards from the shore and become the broken wreck and rubbernecks' delight that she is today.

These arguments may or may not have had a soothing effect on the tempers of the sleepless; but whatever good work they did was rapidly undone by the announcement that a second, larger foghorn is to be erected at Rood Point, and that residents can look forward shortlj- to . hearing its deeper, stronger voice blending with the shrill eiy of the nautophone. Beach front residents are praying that there won't be any fogs.