E-Book Overview
Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances using only environmental clues and simple instruments. John Huth asks what is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic in breadth, weaving together astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ethnography, 'The Lost Art of Finding Our Way' puts us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Haunted by the fate of two young kayakers lost in a fogbank off Nantucket, Huth shows us how to navigate using natural phenomena—the way the Vikings used the sunstone to detect polarization of sunlight, and Arab traders learned to sail into the wind, and Pacific Islanders used underwater lightning and “read” waves to guide their explorations. Huth reminds us that we are all navigators capable of learning techniques ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated skills of direction-finding. Even today, careful observation of the sun and moon, tides and ocean currents, weather and atmospheric effects can be all we need to find our way. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 specially prepared drawings, Huth’s compelling account of the cultures of navigation will engross readers in a narrative that is part scientific treatise, part personal travelogue, and part vivid re-creation of navigational history. Seeing through the eyes of past voyagers, we bring our own world into sharper view.
E-Book Content
THE LOST ART OF FINDING OUR WAY
THE LOST ART OF FINDING OUR WAY John Edward Huth
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2013
Copyright © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Huth, John Edward. The lost art of finding our way / John Edward Huth. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-07282-4 (alk. paper) 1. Navigation—History. 2. Naval art and science—History. I. Title. VK15.H87 2013 629.04’509—dc23 2012044083
Dedicated to the memories of Sarah Aronoff and Mary Jagoda No one is lost . . . to God
Contents
1. Before the Bubble 2. Maps in the Mind 3. On Being Lost 4. Dead Reckoning 5. Urban Myths of Navigation 6. Maps and Compasses 7. Stars 8. The Sun and the Moon 9. Where Heaven Meets Earth 10. Latitude and Longitude 11. Red Sky at Night 12. Reading the Waves 13. Soundings and Tides 14. Currents and Gyres 15. Speed and Stability of Hulls 16. Against the Wind 17. Fellow Wanderers 18. Baintabu’s Story
1 11 30 53 81 99 125 161 193 219 252 291 318 338 364 282 403 428
Appendix 1 467 Appendix 2 471 Appendix 3 473 Appendix 4 477 Glossary 479 Notes 499 Acknowledgments 513 Index 517
THE LOST ART OF FINDING OUR WAY
1. Before the Bubble only a few y e a r s ag o you would have sworn the commuter next to you was crazy. He talks into the air, as if to an imaginary friend, while playing with a tiny box he holds in front of his face. His whole world is a bubble two feet around his head. If, by a miracle, you get his attention and ask him questions, he can only answer by manipulating his tiny box. He checks the box and can tell you tomorrow’s weather, which way is north, and the name of that bright star in the sky. You hide the box, and he becomes helpless. You ask him, “Why is it warm in the summer and cold in the winter?” By way of explanation, the commuter gestures with his hands in front of his face. His left hand becomes the Sun and his right index finger becomes the Earth as it orbits his fist. He mumbles something about the Earth’s being closer to the Sun in the summer and farther away in the winter. His