Existing comment:
The Tools of Navigation and Piloting:
Navigation is the ability to find your location and adjust your course when out of sight of land; piloting is the safe maneuvering of your vessel using visual landmarks, knowledge of the depth of the water, and the character of the sea bottom. Over the centuries, many instruments have been developed to help seamen find their way.
Determining Longitude:
Sailors could determine their position north or south of the equator -- their latitude -- with reasonably accuracy by the 1400s. Determining their longitude -- their position east or west of a base line (the prime meridian in Greenwich, England) -- was a far harder task. As lives continued to be lost due to mistakes in navigation, in 1714 the British government offered a prize of 20,000 pounds to the first person who could devise instruments sufficiently accurate to provide a ship's longitude to within half-a-degree accuracy.
An Englishman named John Harrison eventually solved the problem through his invention of not one, but four remarkable clocks. His early marine chronometers gave sailors the capability of keeping the time at sea accurate to within two minutes of the time in Greenwhich. With this information, they could then measure the angle of the sun or certain stars at a precise moment and, by consulting pre-printed mathematical tables, calculate their longitude.
Signaling:
Communication between ships at sea is difficult; the vessels must get close enough so that the captains can speak to one another or they must use some form of signals. Flags of various designs and colors have been used since antiquity and still undergo constant refinement. ...
Navigation and Signaling (1750):
It's no great feat to leave port in a ship and go to sea out of sight of land. What is critical is to be able to get to your destination, whether that is another port or to return home. Knowing the location, heading, and speed of a ship are vital to its safe navigation. Over many centuries, many tools have been developed to guide seamen in the wilderness of the sea.
It is also important, especially for a naval commander, to relay orders for the effective maneuvering of the fleet or just to exchange information between ships. Signaling and communications were constantly refined and improved in the Age of Sail.
New Treatise on Navigation:
Pierre Bouguer was a brilliant 18th-century French mathematician who published important works on a variety of topics, many of which had to do with aspects of ship design and ship handling. His book, "Nouveau Traite de Navigation," or "New Treatise on Navigation," published in 1753, made important contributions to the theory and practice of navigating a ship out of sight of land. |