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Origins: The story of the self-important aircraft carrier captain Lighthouse getting his well-earned comeuppance at the hands of a plain-speaking lighthouse has been making the rounds on the Internet since early 1996. Most writeups purport to be transcripts of a 1995 conversation between a ship and a lighthouse as documented by Chief of Naval Operations.
It ain't true. Not only does the Navy disclaim it, 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 far older than that, as this sighting from a 1939 book shows:
The fog was very thick, and the Chief Officer of the tramp steamer was peering over the side of the bridge. Suddenly, to his intense surprise, he saw a man leaning over a rail, only a few yards away.
"You confounded fool!" he roared. "Where the devil do you think your ship's going? Don't you know I've got the right of way?"
Out of the gloom came a sardonic voice:
"This ain't no blinkin' ship, guv'nor. This 'ere's a light'ouse!"
Slightly different versions of the e-mailed account 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 U.S. 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.
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