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    Navigational Instruments
    Navigational Instruments
    Navigational Instruments
    Ebook139 pages54 minutes

    Navigational Instruments

    By Richard Dunn

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    About this ebook

    With over two-thirds of the globe covered by water, the ability to navigate safely and quickly across the oceans has been crucial throughout human history. As seafarers attempted longer and longer voyages from the sixteenth century onwards in search of profit and new lands, the tools of navigation became ever more sophisticated. The development of instruments over the last five hundred years has seen some revolutionary changes, spurred on by the threat of disaster at sea and the possibility of huge rewards from successful voyages. As this book shows, the solution of the infamous longitude problem, the extraordinary impact of satellite positioning and other advances in navigation have successfully brought together seafarers, artisans and scientists in search of better ways of getting from A to B and back again.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 19, 2016
    ISBN9781784421434
    Navigational Instruments
    Author

    Richard Dunn

    Trained as a historian of science, Richard Dunn has published widely on subjects including astrology, navigation, scientific instruments and museums. He is currently affiliated with the Science Museum, London, UK, having previously worked as a Curator of the History of Navigation at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

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      Book preview

      Navigational Instruments - Richard Dunn

      CONTENTS

      GETTING ABOUT ON THE WATER

      THE BASIC TOOLS

      GOING FURTHER

      LONGITUDE FOUND

      THE AGE OF MEASUREMENT

      THE RADIO REVOLUTION

      NAVIGATION IN THE SATELLITE AGE

      FURTHER READING

      PLACES TO VISIT

      GETTING ABOUT ON THE WATER

      Navigation is the art of directing a vessel from one place to another. Done well, it ensures safe, speedy travel; executed poorly, it can lead to disaster. With 90 per cent of trade still travelling by sea, the world today depends on good navigation as much as it ever has done. This book is about the instruments and techniques that were developed as European navigators, and then others, sailed further and to harder-to-reach parts of the world from the late fifteenth century onwards. The tools of navigation have changed in those five centuries, dramatically so in recent decades, yet the basic principles have stayed the same.

      BACK TO BASICS

      Getting about at sea is about knowing the right things. Where is the ship? Which way is it heading and how fast? Where is it going to? How might the sea and weather affect the journey? Are there hazards? Navigation is about assembling clues to answer these questions and deciding what to do next.

      Directions for sailing between Orford Ness, Suffolk, and Burnham on the Essex coast, from John Seller, The English Pilot (London, 1751). (D4667-001)

      Before discussing the basic techniques, it is important to acknowledge the importance of other factors. The first is the vessel, since this affects the ability to navigate. In Europe, the development of three-masted (and sometimes four-masted) ships in the mid-fifteenth century was crucial for maritime exploration and expansion. The new ships had rudders, many rectangular sails on the fore- and main masts, and a triangular sail on the mizzen (at the stern). This made them manoeuvrable, flexible in the amount of sail used in different conditions, and able to sail fairly close to the wind. The navigator therefore had more choice about which direction, and thus where, the ship could sail. The introduction of engine-powered propulsion in the nineteenth century increased this flexibility even further, allowing ships to sail almost wherever they wished.

      Navigational instruments and renowned navigators, including Francis Drake and James Cook, underpin commercial prosperity in James Barry’s The Thames, or the Triumph of Navigation, engraving, first published 1791. (PAH7365)

      An early painting of Portuguese carracks, one of the new ship types that enabled the expansion of European trade and exploration, oil on panel, Flemish school, about 1540. (BHC0705)

      The Atlantic Ocean, showing the trade winds, from a world map by Herman Moll, about 1715. (G201:1/38, detail)

      The navigator has always had to pay close attention both to the sea and to the sky. Seamen have long known that tides and currents can throw a ship off course, with accidents frequently attributed to an ‘unexpected’ current. In the age of sail, awareness of the wind was even more critical. Trade winds and the patterns of monsoons were understood at an early date, and were vital for effective navigation, but predicting storms and other adverse weather was far harder. Storms are to be feared even today. Monitoring and predicting the weather is intimately connected with the story of navigation.

      NAVIGATING WITHOUT INSTRUMENTS

      Navigation was a well-developed art long before navigators developed tools for measuring a ship’s position and movements, and for plotting its future course. It already took advantage of extensive seafaring knowledge and a host of practical techniques that did not involve instruments, charts and manuals.

      When sailing within sight of land or not far from it, sea and shore offer visual and other clues. The art of pulling these together to make safe passage is known as pilotage. The clues might be as simple as a distinctive coastal feature, such as the Needles off the Isle of Wight, a welcome sign to British sailors that they were nearing home. A good navigator had to memorise the many landmarks of the areas in which he was plying his trade. The sailor in Geoffrey Chaucer’s late-fourteenth century Canterbury Tales

      ... knew well all the havens, as they were,

      From Gottland to the Cape of Finisterre,

      And every creek in Brittany and Spain.

      Later on, this local knowledge was written down and published in books called pilots or rutters (from the French routier, meaning ‘route-guide’), often with descriptions and sketches. To find their way

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