Norway
has a lot of lighthouses, something like 145 of them along its
coastline. We spent one nice spring day in 1963 steaming along the
Norwegian coast checking out perhaps 15 to 20 of them. The detachment's
navy quartermasters took visual bearings while oceanographers recorded
and plotted the data. Concurrently, the computer, as usual, calculated
our locations based on the Loran C radio navigation receivers while I
recorded readings manually.A book listing lights, buoys and beacons contained visual profiles that helped with lighthouse identification. These served as fixed benchmarks for cross checking the accuracy of Loran C, which was known to have small errors from differences in radio signal propagation velocity over land vs. across the sea. There were some other odd anomalies with Loran C that needed to be calibrated as well.
Norway's coastline is ruggedly beautiful, with towns located along the shore and larger cities inside the fjords. This was as close to Norway as I ever got, as I joined the ship after its time in Bergen. The one exception to this was when Michelson steamed up the long, crooked fjord to Trondheim in the middle of the night, without a pilot. Because of a family emergency back home, one member of the navy detachment left the ship at the harbor pilot station outside of Trondheim, then Michelson turned around and went back out through the fjord to sea.
Today the best way to see the Norwegian coast is by taking a trip on one of the Hurtigruten ships, a passenger and freight service that calls at ports from Bergen all the way north to Kirkenes. It's a real favorite with tourists.
