The History of Navigation
| Navigation is the art of getting from one place to another, safely and
efficiently. Whenever you find a store in a mall or walk home from school, you are using
the tools of the early navigators. But what if you found yourself in a place you
didn’t recognize such as out in the middle of the ocean? The first record of boats
large enough to carry goods for trade is around 3500 B.C. and this would mark the birth of
the art of navigation.These first navigators stayed close to shore and navigated by sight
of landmarks or land characteristics that they could see. Usually they traveled by day and
sought a calm harbor or anchorage at night. They did not have charts but lists of
directions, similar to today’s cruising guides. |
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| When they did venture out of sight of land, the navigator was able to determine his latitude (north/south direction) by observing the height of the sun during the day and the North Star at night. | |
Experienced mariners were said to plot their course by major constellations, though this was not an exact science. Vessels followed the east/west movement of the sun or the track of the stars. However, the navigator had no way to accurately determine longitude and therefore, once out of sight of land, had no idea how far east or west he was. Estimates were made based upon the time it took to get there, a simple form of dead-reckoning still used by navigators today. Using this system, the navigator can determine the distance traveled from one point to another by multiplying the time underway by the speed of the vessel. Since time was measured with a sandglass and speed was estimated by watching pieces of seaweed pass by the hull, these early calculations were often way off. |
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Coastal navigators relied upon the sounding reed (c. Egypt 1500 BC) to measure shallow water depths and the wind rose which described the eight major winds attributed to their originating countries. Using a combination of depth soundings, the sun or stars and the wind rose, these early navigators had to guess where they were when land could not be seen. The first ocean voyages were probably big mistakes - a vessel blown off course by a sudden storm or error by the helmsman. The Vikings regularly sailed to Iceland
The copyright of the article The History of Navigation in Boating - Power & Sail is owned by Capt. Matt. Permission to republish The History of Navigation in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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