Message #346060

[DumbAss Tanker]

Such things normally have a pre-arrnaged meaning, much like "One of by land, two if by sea, and I on the opposite shore shall be."  Absent the advanced arrangement of meaning, those lanterns would have meant nothing.

There are several means of conveying more complex messages than lighting a single fire, such as having two (an elementary binary system), or being able to use a single fire and occlude the light periodically with a screen, or add a substance to alter the color of the flame.

In Napoleonic times, I believe, there was a system of telegraph towers across France to convey vital news; "Telegraph" did not mean an electrified Morse code system, which did not yet exist, it meant a system of semaphore towers relaying complex messages with two moving arms similar to the way sailors still do (and it is the origin of the two signal flags which are the branch insignia of the Army's Signal Corps).  Especially in the Indian Wars, the Army used the heliograph (Flashing light signals from mirrors, using sunlight) which was well-suited to the bright sun of the Southwest and with a much-greater visual range than semaphore flags.

Aethelred is known as 'The Unready' due to a quirk of language.  In the proto-English spoken by the Saxons, "Rede" had to do with speech or counsel, like and related to "Raada" in Norse (Like Harald Hardraada).  The actual Saxon moniker was something like Aethelred Unrede, meaning "...Ill-advised," it became mutated into "...Unready" by modern English-speakers.