ROCKETS AS DISTRESS SIGNALS
Lieutenant J. O. Williams, RN, hon. secretary of the Aldeburgh branch of the
National Lifeboat Institution, writes, with reference to the use of star rockets
at sea as signals of distress, that the practice of sending up rockets has
become, roughly speaking, not uncommon when the condition of matters hardly
warrants this extreme course. The result is that they are sometimes not regarded with the gravity attaching to them.
Lieutenant Williams thinks that the proper penalty attaching to the improper use of rockets at sea ought to be increased, so that in the discretion of the court the irresponsible firing of rockets should be made a criminal offence.
It is not an unknown event, Lieutenant Williams says, for lifeboats to go out
in response to a rocket signal, to cruise about for hours, and to find nothing.
This means worry, trouble and expense, which the Lifeboat Institution can ill
afford.
(The Times, June 27, 1912. p.4)
Of course if you associate lights you can see with a nearby and "perfectly all right" tramp steamer, and the lights only go halfway to the masthead light (not halfway up the mast, note, but perhaps one-third of the way), then you are not likely to be concerned about them.
Stone was also capable of believing that the rockets came from some ship over the far distant horizon, as indeed they did, but at no stage did he associate the rockets with critical distress. His behaviour bears out that simple fact.
It is a fact, as Carrie Brown points out, that sealers fired rockets in the vicinity of the Grand Banks in order to recall dories.
There are many other aspects of the widespread use of rockets in 1912 for identification, illumination and other purposes that are forgotten or unknown about today. I could post at least a dozen examples.
They should have made it clear cut, shouldn't they?