When I was young, I lived near the beach. My beach was at the beginning of the harbor of New York City. All the ships that had to go to New York City passed my beach.

My street ended at the water and right there at the end of the street was a tall, white lighthouse. All night the lighthouse would shine a red light to warn the ships,

"Stay away, stay away. The water is not deep here and there are rocks. If you come too close, you will get stuck in the sand of the beach and in the rocks. Stay away. "

The light turned all night. First it was shining out to the ocean, then on the beach, and then on my street and its houses. Next it would shine on my house and my bed room was filled with red light. It kept turning and the light went to the other side of the beach for a little while. Next the light was shining out to the ocean and the whole thing went on again and again. Every ten seconds the light made its turn. I liked it when the light came into my room because it meant that everything was safe and good.

If there was fog on the water, the lighthouse blew its foghorn every ten seconds too. That way the sailors on the ships could hear the horn and knew that there was danger even when they could not see the light. I liked the sound of the foghorn, too.

One morning, I woke up early because my bed was shaking. The whole room was shaking. The house was shaking. My mother and father told me to get dressed quickly and we ran out of the house. All our neighbors were in the steet. We were afraid that something terrible was going to happen. We thought our houses would fall down.

Someone came from the beach and said, "It's on the beach!"

We all ran down to the beach. On the beach we saw a big ship. It was stuck in the rocks and sand of the beach. It looked very funny and very big. The sailors were trying to back out of the rocks. The engine of the ship was making a lot of noise. The engine was making the beach shake. That was why my house was shaking. We told the sailors to turn off the engine. They said, "The powerful engines cannot get us out of here and we will turn them off."

It was nice and quiet and we talked to the sailors. They sang songs in another language. They had money and candy from other coutries and they threw the coins and candy to us. It was fun.

The next morning my bed was shaking again. I got dressed quickly and ran to the beach.

The engine of the ship was going again and it was trying to back the ship out of the rocks. This time, there were two tugboats helping. Big ropes from the tugboats were tied to the back of the ship. The tugboats pulled and the engine of the ship roared. The tugboats blew their whistles and the sailors on the ship rang a bell and blew the ship's horn. One of the kids on the beach said, "Look, it's moving!" Yes, it was starting to move. At first it went very slowly and then it started to move faster. It was getting free of the rocks. After a few minutes, the ship was in the deep water.

A loud blast from the ship's horn told the tugboats and us that the ship was able to sail by itself. We all cheered and waved goodbye to the sailors. The tugboats blew their whistles a few times. We cheered for the tugboats. Then the tugsboats and the ship turned to the city and sailed away.

We all wondered how the sailors made such a big mistake. They steered the ship to the lighthouse instead of away. Maybe they didn't know that our lighthouse was warning the ships to stay away. It was lucky that the rocks were there to stop the ship because it would have hit the lighthouse.

We never saw the ship again but we always remember it. We remember it because we see the place in the rocks where it got stuck. And that place will always be there.