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[MarkTheBike]

Hah! I know what you mean about the cruise ships. We see the Brittany Ferry most days and it does look like a floating fun-fair. I was passing an Isle of Wight Ferry many years ago and there were several cars with their alarms bleating away so I called them up and asked if they would mind identifying their sound signal. It was a bit pompous and tongue-in-cheek at the time, but, interestingly, we moved there shortly afterwards and I noted that the ferry staff had started requesting passengers disable their alarms. Probably a coincidence but I can't imagine asking them to turn off all the lights would result in a printable reply.

As Salty says above, UK sailing boats use a tricolour for sailing and pulpit/pushpit/steaming lights for motoring (the steaming light must be higher than the nav lights so is up the mast).

[Salty]

Agreed Mark !

You know what makes me laugh most about the "except lights which...blah blah" statement? We liveaboard in the Caribbean during the winter and if you have ever seen a Cruise ship at night I challenge you to see it's Nav lights behind the cabins, bars, swimming pool video screens etc   I seriously had to consult my AIS between BVI and St Maarten last year to see which way the floating apartment block was heading it contravenes every part of that statement in many ways ! One memorable night we saw a ship with a large RED set of neon bar lights on the Starboard side of the ship near the aft stern quarter. I posted on Royal Caribbean Cruise lines FB page asking them why the heck they didnt make the bar lights green and never received any reply of course.....

I think I'll convert to a tricolour although I would like to keep the option of deck level too since I do believe many folks look at the water in close quarters.

Fun and informative...

Going back "a year or two" to 1970, I was on a 210 000 tonne VLCC in ballast heading in to Las Palmas at night when a passenger ship came out. We had only our main and foremast lights and starboard side light showing in the direction of the other ship which was in a direction about fifty degrees off our starboard bow. As they came out of the port they turned to port towards us and began heading for a point between our forward and mainmast lights and closing quite quickly. At the time we were fairly close in and moving very slowly such that we could not safely turn to starboard. After watching the other ship for a few moments we came to the conclusion that they had not realised there was a huge chunk of VLCC between our forward and mainmast lights. So we switched on our maindeck floodlights, and with that they made an immediate turn away. I'm not sure who was more relieved, them or us, but I reckon it gave them one hell of a fright to realise their port turn had put them minutes away from a collision.
So sometimes those extra lights can help to clarify a situation.