Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

Be it remembered, also, that it was Davis who improved the cross-staff and superseded the clumsy astrolabe for taking meridian altitudes at sea. It was commonly spoken of as Davis’s quadrant, and was afterwards improved by Flamstead with the addition of a glass lens. Subsequently it was further improved by Halley, and as such was used almost exclusively till the year 1731, when it was in turn superseded by Halley’s quadrant. When we read again the entrancing narratives given in Hakluyt and elsewhere of the Elizabethan voyages into the unknown, let us note that reposing somewhere in the high poop of these ships there were most probably all the following instruments for navigating the trackless seas. There was a calendar, an astrolabe, a cross-staff, a celestial globe, a terrestrial globe, a universal horloge for knowing the hour of the day in every latitude, a nocturne labe for telling the hour of the night, one or more compasses, a navigation chart, a general map, and a printed chart.

Ship Designer with his Assistant.

This illustration belongs to the latter half of the sixteenth century, or the beginning of the seventeenth, and is among the Pepysian MSS. in Magdalene College, Cambridge. Pepys’ own title for this is “Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry.”

It was in 1599 that Edward Wright published his “Haven-finding Art.” In his volume “Certaine Errors in Navigation,” he complains of the errors in the proportions of the existing charts. These consisted in wrongly showing the distances of places. He speaks also of sailing “by a great Circle, which is to bee drawne by those two places,” and asserts that this is a better method than sailing always at right angles to the meridian. In practically all the charts of this age the surface was ruled with rhumb-lines from the thirty-two points of the compass, as is still the case to-day on certain Dutch charts. The origin of the word “rhumb” was Portuguese, and doubtless these lines appeared on the earliest Portuguese charts. In the first of these two books, Wright also furnished a table of variations of the compass in different parts of the world.

As to the practical side of navigation, Bourne exhorted his mariners to remember that the earth is a globe and not a “platforme,” as “generally the most parte of the seamen make their account.” The meridians, he reminded them, grow narrower towards the two poles. If one had occasion to voyage northward it were better to sail by the globe, he suggested. Therefore you should keep a perfect account of the ship’s course. Then resort to your globe and consider what place and parallel you are in (by means of the sun at day and the stars at night). Knowing where you are, set your globe to the elevation of your pole, and then turn to the place of your zenith and seek the opposite of it in your parallel, for then you know that in the same parallel is your east and west line. Then the just quarter of that circle to the pole must be divided into the eight points of your compass, doing so likewise on the other side.

From the southern voyages the “plats or cardes for the sea” were recommended. Bourne strongly advised against painting their compasses with so many colours on these charts and so many flags on the land, but bade them use the vacant places left on the paper for better objects, such as the time of high water at certain states of the moon, and the elevation of the land, in order that the appearance of the latter might not be mistaken. The use of sea cardes for navigating during long voyages he regards as very necessary for three reasons: they show you (1) how one place bears from another; (2) the distances between the places; (3) in what latitude any place is. But the master or pilot of the ship is also to bear in mind the effect of tides, currents, the surging of the sea or scantiness of the wind, which might put the ship to leeward of her course. Also in long voyages the wind might shift ahead, so the mariner must keep a perfect account of his courses and mark each new course on the chart, and pay regard to the “swiftnesse” or “slownesse” of the ships. If the weather be clear he was to take the true altitude of the pole, which will correct the ship’s course and give “a very neare gesse” how the port of destination bears and how far.

The compass was variously known in the Elizabethan age as the “sea-directorie,” the “nauticall box,” and the “sea-compasse.” Lightbody describes the bittacles as “little wooden pins for nailing the compass-box withal.” The first atlas was published in Dutch at Leyden in 1585 by Wagenaer. In this are to be found excellent coloured charts of the Narrow Seas. It is evident from these that there was a system of buoyage even in those days. There are barrel buoys, for instance, and basket beacons such as you can still find in use to-day in different parts of Holland. The sands on the port hand of the Swin Middle at the entrance to the Thames Estuary are shown marked by staff-and-triangle marks. This excellent atlas was soon translated into English, so that the elaborate sailing directions and the admirable little contours of the coast—crude but useful—could be placed at the service of English mariners. This English version was known as Wagenaer’s “Mariner’s Mirrour,” and there was also “The Sea Mirrour,” translated from the Dutch of William Johnson Blaeu by Richard Hynmers in 1625, which was another of the numerous nautical books of this time, containing instruction in practical navigation, sailing directions, charts, and contours.

A Chart of the Thames Estuary.