PORT SERVICES AS REGARDS SHIPPING 43
unless it is able to afford accessibility to vessels drawing
30 ft. of water. The most up-to-date ports are making
provision for vessels drawing up to 4o ft.

Lighting and Buoyage. In England the lighting and
buoying of harbour entrance channels devolves, in the
majority of cases, on the Corporation of Trinity House—
or, to give it its ancient designation, the Guild or Fraternity
of the Blessed and Undividable Trinity—which is the
recognized statutory body for dealing with the lighting
and demarcation of the coastline. There are certain
exceptions. The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, for
instance, supervise and control the buoying and lighting
of the approaches to the port of Liverpool, including
certain lighthouses stationed on the coast of North Wales,
as far as Anglesea. The approaches to the port of Hull
are similarly under the jurisdiction of the Humber Con-
servancy. But the Thames follows the general rule and
the navigable channel to London is buoyed and illuminated
by Trinity House.

In Scotland, the duties of lighthouse authority are
discharged by the Commissioners of Northern Lights,
whose headquarters are at Edinburgh.

The lighthouse authorities of the United Kingdom
have adopted the following uniform system of buoyage—

Conical Buoys, with pointed tops, are used to denote the
starboard hand, or that side of the entrance channel which
is to the right of the mariner, either going with the main
stream of flood tide, or entering a harbour, river or estuary
from seaward.

Can Buoys, with flat tops (truncated cones) are used
to denote the port hand, which is the left-hand side of the
mariner under the circumstances indicated.

1 The jurisdiction of the Corporation of Trinity House, as the
general lighthouse authority, and their general powers are set out
in Part XI, Sections 634 et seq., of the Merchant Shipping Act.
Section 653 of the same Act governs their relationship with various
port and harbour authorities who maintain lighthouses, buoys, and
beacons in England and Wales.