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An urban tale, of course.The internal evidence is contradictory too.
The English hold that a 'collision' occurs only between two
moving objects. The version with the Canadian lighthouse keeper
  is much less ..well Anglo-Saxon.

The US Navy's view:


An urban tale debunking URL:

...The anecdote shows up in a 1992 collection of jokes and tall tales.
Worse, it appears in Stephen Covey's 1989 The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People, and he got it from a 1987 issue of Proceedings, a
publication of the U.S. Naval Institute.
It's likely far older than that, because another reader mentioned he saw it
passed around as a photocopied joke in the late 1960s while serving aboard
either the USS Dixie or USS Truxtun. That certainly agrees with the opinion
of Navy sources (as quoted in the news article later on this page); they
place the story as being thirty or forty years old.
Slightly different versions name different ships as the one which
unwillingly gained a lesson in the unimportance of self importance. Having
debunked this tale a few times themselves, the Navy has a web page about
this legend, one that answers what three of the commonly cited ships were
doing at the time this supposedly occurred.

Brian

At 11:15 PM 9/10/02, you wrote:
>The following is the transcript of an ACTUAL radio conversation that
>took
>place in October 1995, between a US Navy ship off the coast of England,
>and
>some British authority. The transcript was publicly released by the MoD
>in
>Aug 2000.
>
>BRITS: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the South, to avoid a
>collision.
>
>AMERICANS: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the North, to
>avoid a collision.
>
>BRITS: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15 degrees to the
>South to avoid a collision.
>
>AMERICANS: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert
>YOUR
>course.
>
>BRITS: Negative. I say again. You will have to divert your course.
>
>AMERICANS: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN. THE SECOND LARGEST
>SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE
>DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS, AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT
>YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. THAT'S 15 DEGREES NORTH, OR
>COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.
>
>BRITS: We are a lighthouse. Now F... off.

Brian Whatcott
   Altus OK                      Eureka!

   

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