Mayday-SOS

Mayday-SOS

Flag semaphore is the telegraphy system conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Information is encoded by the position of the flags; it is read when the flag is in a fixed position.

Semaphores were adopted and widely used in the maritime world in the 19th century.
The current flag semaphore system uses two short poles with square flags, which a signalman holds in different positions to signal letters of the alphabet and numbers.

Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It may derive from the French expression "venez m'aider", meaning "come help me", the last two syllables of which sound similar to “Mayday".

This is what the Mayday message, SOS would look like using Semaphore flags. I only have one little man so this is a photo merge of three images, the upside to that being I only had to make two little flags.

Igor is correct, the beatles semaphore doesn’t make any sense. I think the “just pose for the camera” explanation fits best.