Bubbler Talk question asker Mark Behar is standing on the shores of Lake Michigan waxing nostalgic about foghorns. “Well, I remember it back in the 1970s when I first lived on the lower east side," he recalls.
Mark describes a regular foghorn that would consistently, almost automatically, go off on Milwaukee’s east side whenever there was foggy weather.
“There was always a great sense of relaxation, of calm, of something wondrous and exciting [when the foghorn would go off],” he shares.
Mark describes the foghorn as: “A two-tone, loud, melodious sound, which stirred everyone's spirits. It was very much like those little air chimes that you hear but low pitch chimes that are very, very relaxing. This was a very distinct baritone sound, which was just very nice.”
These days, he still hears foghorns in Milwaukee, but much less frequently, and only in a one-tone pitch. Brandon Schmitz captured one going off while he was on by Brady Street in 2022.
Mark Behar asks Bubbler Talk: "What happened to the ubiquitous Milwaukee foghorn? Why did it change?"
First of all, this meant a crash course in nautical rules of the road from Lt. Phillip Gertler. He’s the public affairs officer for the Ninth Coast Guard District — that's the Great Lakes region.
Phillip explains the purpose of foghorns: They’re used in times of reduced visibility. “Whether it's a rocky shoreline, whether it's anything that could be dangerous, ... at the time it was implemented, that was really the only way to make sure mariners knew about it,” he says.
A lot of Milwaukee’s foghorn sounds used to come from the Milwaukee Breakwater Lighthouse.
It’s a square, white, art deco lighthouse out past the McKinley Marina. It’s visible from a lot of the east side and in places like Veteran’s Park, Lakeshore Park and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
OnMilwaukee previously reported about the Breakwater Lighthouse.
In the past, lighthouses like that had working foghorns and lighthouse keepers. “Granted, this is many, many years ago," Phillip says. "But that would be their whole job... to make sure that the lighthouse is properly maintained, making sure that all the systems work, and making sure that it's turned on when it needs to be.”
Now the foghorns on lighthouses aren’t as necessary. That’s in part because large commercial ships have their own foghorns.
Foghorns aren't required on some smaller crafts, says Phillip, but smaller boats do have to have some way of making a sound signal. "Typically, it's a whistle that is just attached to the boat," he says.
The de-emphasis on foghorns at lighthouses, also called "aids to navigation," happened because of technology. “It's remarkable how much different navigation is now versus 50 years ago,” says Phillip.
Radar has become more accurate. There’s GPS and AIS, a positioning system that works through satellites.
He says, “So, you can look at and you say, ‘Hey, there's about 200 miles out, whatever your radar ranges,’ and they actually go further than that. And you can say, ‘It is a vessel, USS, whatever it is, who owns it, a little bit of information, where it's going, how fast it's going.’ And that actually lets you adjust your navigation based on that.”
Because of these advancements, full lighthouse staffing became obsolete. In fact, the coast guard actually sold the Breakwater Lighthouse to a private group in 2013.
Question asker Mark and I tried to track down the two-tone horn — through national and UWM archives, Facebook, open source websites, the Lighthouse Friends who currently own the Breakwater, the Wisconsin Maritime Museum and historian John Gurda.
No luck.
But I met Mark at the Lake Express Ferry just south of the Port of Milwaukee. It’s a ship that carts people and cars across the lake to Muskegon, Michigan and back. Mark reminisces over the days that he could be lulled to sleep by the old, consistent foghorn off the breakwater.
“You knew, especially when the weather was bad or when the lake was foggy, you knew that it would be there, you would be able to rely on it, to hone in on that sound, and just have this great sense of wonderment as to what it is where it's coming from,” he recalls.
Mark thinks about all the different maritime stories people hear as kids all around the world, including the Iliad and the Odyssey. “That there were ways to warn sailors about the potential dangers of a shoreline,” he says. “And just like the sirens of Greek mythology, the foghorn kind of serves as that attractive warning.”
Mark appreciates the one-tone foghorn coming from these ships, but he still misses the consistent, reliable breakwater foghorn.
“The one unfortunate thing may be that these memories will be lost to future generations because they will never know what those sounds were like many decades ago,” Mark notes.
But not everyone is so sentimental about foghorns. Karen Kendrick-Hands of Madison was somewhat wary of them — at least the one on the Lake Express Ferry. We asked her if she likes the sound of the foghorn, and she says she covers her ears. “You only have so many loud noises in your inner ears’ nerves,” Karen says. "I don't want presbycusis.” That’s hearing loss caused by loud noises.
So, whether you’re reminiscing from afar or covering your ears up close, you can know ships are out there on the great, mysterious, open waters.
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