The QM is mainly in charge of navigation. Signalling is an afterthought. This was most obvious in times when we actually had to *do* signalling with our signalman counterparts on navy ships. We tended to do semaphore or flashing light r e a l l y s l o w... because the standard was: don't send any faster than you can read, and I could only read r e a l l y s l o w. :-)