Nautical Navigation Through The Centuries
Modern navigation tools for boating have come a long way from the old days of navigating the sea. While mariners one relied on the stars and their own senses to arrive safely to land, people can now rely on GPS navigation systems and elaborate satellite networks to guide them through the vast open ocean. Nautical navigation has changed dramatically through the centuries, but those changes have never robbed mariners of the sense of adventure that comes from traveling the high seas.
The history of Western nautical navigations starts roughly 4,000 years ago with the ancient Phoenicians. They used simple charts and observations of the movements of the sun to calculate directions and ocean routes. Later on, compasses, calipers, and astrolabes were used extensively to analyze the position of the stars and use that to determine location and direction while out on the ocean.
The mariner’s compass, which was a predecessor of the magnetic compass, was used by mariners when they could not see the sun to determine the general direction of north and thus figure out which direction the wind was blowing. It was not until the 13th century that mariners realized the importance of documenting their travels with maps that could later be used as navigation tools. These maps were simple and did not show lines of latitude or longitude. The sextant, invented around 1730, was a large advancement in nautical technology as it allowed mariners to determine their latitude based on the position of the sun, stars, and horizon. The most important and beneficial invention for ancient mariners was the seagoing chronometer in 1764, which made circumnavigating the Earth possible and helped mariners complete many charts.
In modern times, electronics have made nautical navigation much easier and more accurate. Inventions such as the gyroscopic compass in 1907, radar in 1935, Long Range Navigation (Loran) in the 1940’s, and GPS in recent years have made navigation an exact science for modern mariners.