On the observation deck was a tarp-covered signal light, which Burke, an ex-Navy lieutenant, likes to flash at passing ships.

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It stems from when islanders used to row a pilot gig out to big passing ships to help navigate them through the rocks and avoid shipwreck.

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In 1898, Marconi's company set up two radio stations on the north coast of Ireland that were used to send information about passing ships to the mainland.

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Located on a peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture in central Japan, Miura City developed as a military port on the Pacific and a harbour providing shelter to passing ships.

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It is a tale of two retailing giants, giant ships passing in the night.

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The Gulf of Aden is a key route for ships passing from the Arabian Sea and Indian Oceans to the southern Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea by the Suez Canal.

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Talling passed around a painting dating from 1750 showing the same scene, only with ships and rowboats passing through an estuary lined with wooden houses.

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Many of them come on cruise ships, often passing through Chile or Argentina first, but there are also more than a dozen research stations on the continent, the largest being the McMurdo Station in the south, which can support more than a thousand people.

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The IMB says pirates off Somalia use "mother ships" that travel far out to sea and launch smaller boats to attack passing vessels, sometimes using rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

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