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“Are We There Yet, Captain … ?” Introducing Pirate Navigation 1690-1730 A new book The Pirate Round : Early 18th Century Maritime Navigation : How it was Done and How to Do it Yourself - is written by ukpiratebrotherhood member Richard Rutherford-Moore, a long-term re-enactor and historical interpreter - and will be published in the Late Summer 2007 by Heritage Books in Westminster, Maryland. The book contains easy-to-understand explanations, diagrams and exclusive photographs enabling any reader to grasp the navigational techniques of the period 1690-1730 in addition to applying basic navigational exercises and several anecdotes making the book an excellent sea-faring yarn to be read by any historical mariner or pirate! The presentation methods described above are detailed in the book with a special section on ‘Recreating the Ships’ Artist’. Richard will shortly be presenting an 18th Century Maritime Navigation display aboard a full-sized free-floating replica of Captain James Cook’s ship, HM Bark Endeavour. The author can be hailed on this e-mail address:- Columbus saw ‘strange lights’ during his voyage of discovery
and some of his seamen did have some odd notions about forms of life
that dwelt in the oceans, some of which were capable of swallowing-up
ships or an unwary seamen taking a swim (not that many ever did). We
now know these to be based mostly on religious or superstitious speculation
or more often, alcoholic-induced visions and most ‘unexplained’ ship-losses
were due to extensive voyages and a lack of provisions, vessels simply
being caught out in bad weather or mistakes in navigation leading to
shipwreck : that we can’t do anything about the former save keeping
a ‘weather-eye open’ or by staying ashore, how did seamen
in The Golden Age of Pirates deal with the latter ? The basics of Maritime
Navigation were well-established some years before the early 18th Century.
The struggle throughout the 17th Century was to apply the emerging new
techniques in a growing ‘scientific’ age to ships ; many
of which were now sailing very long distances seeking or establishing
new areas of trade. Many of the locations given in ancient notes of these
faraway places are given as a Latitude ; accompanied by a map or a chart
literally giving basic directional details - for example, the vague reference
in 1578 to reach Panama from Europe based on a single known location
- The Canary Islands - such as a simple translation of ‘set sail
west a hundred leagues, then sail south : starboard at The Island of
Fire and follow the sun to reach The Great South Sea’. You may
laugh - but over a hundred years later this sort of thing was still the
norm and any voyage into open water was still the terrific risk for seamen
described by Doctor Samuel Johnson in 1750 ; between 1690 and 1720 four
expeditions missed’ their intended destinations by anywhere between
300 and 50 miles and lost valuable time finding them (one ship sailing
in the opposite direction for two weeks) during which many men died from
scurvy. Two major fleets were lost when they sailed onto rocks and reefs
- which had been charted and the ships even had pilots aboard - both
resulting in several ship-losses and hundreds of deaths and the balance
of naval power changing hands. Once you’ve learned the basics of
ship-handling - in reference to the wind at any time decreeing which
direction you can sail your ship towards in rather than the direction
you might want to sail towards - you can then take a look at where your
destination might be (I say might as some places were placed within an
estimate and their location given by latitude only). A notorious ship-loss
trial in 1817 had the Master of a wrecked ship giving in evidence his
claim that the obstacle was in the wrong place as shown on his chart
; it later became obvious that the wreck was caused by his ship being
in the wrong place on the chart. This Master had the latest navigational
technology aboard so let’s deduct a hundred years from the above
date and look at Pirates in the Caribbean where none of it was even invented … any ‘Introduction
to Maritime Navigation’ at that time has it slowly emerging from
being considered as an Art into what was to be soon dubbed a Science
- but in terms of quoting Mathematics it’s a turn-off for most
people at a pirate event. In an age whose maritime heritage has mermaids
and sea-monsters still bordering somewhere between belief and suspicion
and many ‘ordinary’ mariners perhaps still subconsciously
thinking that the Earth is flat and if you sail too far you will fall
off (seamen are notoriously superstitious), food preservation aboard
ship meaning either salting or smoking and all the surrounding lands
held by foreigners - and being a pirate, without having a Colonial Governor
somewhere having a ‘blind eye’ - that makes an enemy just
about everywhere puts any mistake in ship-position as potentially deadly. ‘Island-hopping’ is
one possible way around it but you risk hostile guarda-coastas and you
will be limited to prowling a relatively small area for a short time
- when you are spotted and have to make a quick getaway into open water
or your ship is blown off course for any reason you are in big trouble
if you don’t have a clue where you actually are or where you are
going ! ‘Plain Sailing’ requires some basic tools and a
sheet of paper : plot your latitude at A (useful if you have a chart)
and do a quick sum every hour during the voyage in calculating the ships
speed and noting the compass-direction the ship is sailing towards on
the paper (or of course, in your log-book). Add these up over 24 hours
and you can mark the position of your ship on the paper and your course
and distance from A - wind permitting, if you reverse this course through
180° you can calculate by your speed at that time both how long it
will take you to return to A and in what direction to sail the ship to
reach A. This method is known as ‘Deduced Reckoning’ (more
often, known as ‘Dead Reckoning’). But - as any mariner will
tell you - your ship won’t be in that position as it will have
moved to port or starboard along the line of your course by a varying
amount because of the action on the ship by the wind and any current.
This is where ‘observing’ instruments come in : if you could
take a ‘sight’ to fix your latitude, you can then adjust
your position accordingly and calculate the ‘drift’ of your
ship : this is known as fixing your position by ‘Observation’ (usually
by measuring the altitude of the sun in the sky at noon, local time -
if you can see the sun, that is !). Navigation is usually a blend of
both methods and Instruments make both tasks simpler - but in accepting
the associated risk, you can do both without instruments at all ; this
is where experience comes in.
In becoming familiar with the above, I might add that you don’t require a ship to learn the basics - I performed a ‘virtual circumnavigation’ on paper by simply adjusting the reality time-scale to one hour equals one day and having someone introduce ‘variables’ in terms of wind strength and direction just by throwing a couple of dice and adjusting a simple homemade instrument ; you can make such an exercise as simple or as complicated as you like but for a beginner, it’s best to start simple and work your way up through the basic principles applying changing wind, weather and ship-provisioning conditions later. I find a ‘living history’ presentation of Navigation easy if I stick to the basic principles - but ‘pirates’ grab the attention of children and when ‘plunder’ is on offer in the form of chocolate ‘gold bars’ or ‘doubloons’ it does give a definite incentive to learning! I found most after a short brief could ‘cast the log’ to calculate speed, read off a compass direction in a few seconds and overall grasp the basic ship-handling, navigational demonstrations and mathematics very easily (embarrassing a few adults, who couldn’t) so one of the ‘have-a-go’ presentations I give is to turn maritime navigation into a ‘table-top game’ using tiny model ships - and throw in the occasional squall, storm or war. The adults are also equally keen to take a look at the genuine navigational items I have on display - depending on the chosen year of the ‘living history’ session I display items that can be handled and examined such as charts, parallel rules, dividers, compasses, telescopes, Cross-staff, Back-staff, Octant, Chronometer - and offer a basic instruction as to how these were used in a general introduction before getting down to business on the chart-table. Navigation is not boring - it’s as challenging and interesting as learning to fire a musket correctly and is also something every seaman or pirate would equally aspire to as much as acquiring personal wealth. Pistols, cannons, swords and muskets are without doubt very useful tools when engaged in piracy : but without your pirate ship being in the right place at the right time and a crew starving to death through lack of food and water, it makes such things useless ! In the immortal words in Treasure Island of Long John Silver : “We can all steer a course : but who’s to set one … ?” Sailing off to the Caribbean sounds romantic : but even ‘on paper’ if you can plot and maintain a course to sail your ‘virtual’ square-rigged ship in the year 1700 west along The English Channel on a period chart from Dover to Plymouth in ‘prevailing conditions’ without hitting a rock, running aground on a shoal or a sandbar or attracting a French cannonball you’ve certainly achieved something !
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