Night Glasses

[Alan Hill]

Does anyone recall night glasses (binocular) as part of the bridge equipment ? I'm pretty sure that we had them on my first couple of ships. They were just straight through tubes with lenses, no prisms.

[Keith at Tregenna]

Are these similar to those missing on Titanic's safety equipment ?

[Captain Kong]

I never came across them in all my ships in 45 years,
Cheers
Brian

[Ivan Cloherty]

Does anyone recall night glasses (binocular) as part of the bridge equipment ? I'm pretty sure that we had them on my first couple of ships. They were just straight through tubes with lenses, no prisms.

Yes they did exist, but they were not specifically night glasses, they were standard issue by many cheap skate shipping companies, including PSNC in the 50's, if you wanted prisms you usually purchased and carried your own, got some prisms in the 50's on my first trip to Japan, I still have them and as good as the day they were purchased although the case has given up the ghost

[Alan Hill]

I'm glad it wasn't my imagination.

[Ivan Cloherty]

I'm glad it wasn't my imagination.

Definitely not your imagination, the nickname for them was 'beer bottles', they could survive a lot of dropping when left on the bridge front drop down table when the old gal was rolling her guts out

[John Arton]

Alan
One ship I was Master of in 2000 we were given a set of "Night Glass's to trial. They were a pair of binoculars that had a cheapo version of those night vision goggles that the SAS etc. use.
They were so-so, you could certainly see the outline of any ship during darkness but only in a greenish shade. Any manoeuvring to avoid the other vessel had to be done on how you judged the other vessels aspect from a blurry outline. All Nav. lights appeared to be white.
Useful I guess but on the expensive side at $2000 a pop. After a 6 month trial the owners asked us to return them but somebody had half hitched them. Managed to squeeze out of that by saying they must have disappeared whilst I was on leave so they should ask my Latvian counterpart where they were. (he was later done for flogging Russian arms and missiles to a West African dictator, the case was quite famous at the time)
rgds
JA
rgds
JA