The ancient art of landfinding in the Pacific

Blame this on Robi and Terry! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

" We come to waves now, near land and far out [said Abera]. The main swell, nao bangaki [nao- wave or swell] comes from the South; it is big and low and does not break; it is independent of the trade wind. If you are in a canoe bound from Onotoa to Tabiteuea [about north-north-west] you feel it as a slow heave that rolls the canoe a little from the port side. This swell can be detected over all the seas."- We, the Navigators page 182

More to come, lots more! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Is this comming from a novel? Maybe a science fiction book? LOL!!!!

Check with your local library! It's in the non-fiction section! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Sorry but that does not answer my question. What is this comming from? What is the source?

Pete listed the literary reference at the end of the quote he posted. It's from We, the navigators , and sounds like a very interesting read.

We, the Navigators is a book written by David Lewis, published in 1972. He draws his information from the written record of the first European explorers to visit the Pacific and from conversations with the last of the Pacific navigators still living in modern times.

Is that when they thought the world was flat? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

No its when they were eating each other.

I read We the Navigators when prepping for my first trans-Atlantic. It was a pleasure to study and provided techniques that actually worked in the field.

"Expanded landfall" comes in handy spotting particular clouds over islands at vast distances.

"Star course" is a terrific technique of learning the sequence of stars that rise or set on a particular heading. Steering by the stars is considerably easier and more accurate than steering by copass.

Reflected waves didn't work for me, but wave profiles for various current vs. wind conditions is valid.

Regards
Chet

If you guys are interested in navigation, I read quite an interesting book a few years ago that I would highly recommend:

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

by Dava Sobel

And if you ever get to London, John Harrison's clocks are in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Amazing machines!

Oops! Edited to say that they're actually in Greenwich Royal Observatory and not in the NMM - but you HAVE to go to both so it doesn't really matter!

I was just in London but didn't have time to see famous machines--I'll catch it next time.

Actually that would be :

That is time when in a show of power the Church tried to make everyone believe the worlds was flat. In maritime circles however the knowledge that the world was a sphere was retained as accurate ever since its discovery. How do we know that now ?

Because of what use are latitude lines and sextants if the world was actually flat ?

Lets see if anybody knows the answer to this question.

Wouter

WAS flat <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />!?

You got me Wout, I do not know. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

If the world was indeed flat the measured angle to any star would remain the same no matter where you were on the flat world. Because the globe is actually round the measured angle to any star changes as you move towards or away from it. For example the angle to the north star gets smaller (in relation to Horizontal) as you go further south. This would not happen on a flat world. This is just basic geometry stuff.

BLS

Exactly !

Because Mariners stuck to latitude lines and measurement devices like the sextant we know that part of European society retained the conviction that the world was round ever since that fact was discovered by the ancient greeks. In midevil times this was a tightly kept "trade" secret as you would be beheaded by the church it you ever decided to share this knowlegde with the world.

Wouter

I don't understand that. If the world were a pancake but were still circling the sun and rotating on an axis and oscillating on that axis, wouldn't you still get different angles to the stars?

Also, if the Earth were a pancake, would places like Australia and China actually be places we could get to with a really good posthole digger? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Mary,

The answer is to you fisrt question is maybe. The church also said that not only that the world was flat but that it was the center of the universe and that everything revolved around it. If the universe revolved around the flat earth on an axis perpendicular to the plane of the flat earth than all the stars would always have the same angle in reference to the horizon no matter where you were or what time of night you took the measurements, they would all appear to just go around the sky at the same height from the horizon. If the universe revolved on a different plane then all the stars would appear to change angles during the night.

The answer to your second question is probably no. I have never seen anybody small enough to fit down a hole the diameter that a pole digger would make. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

BLS

All I know is that I was told from early childhood that if I started digging a hole in my yard in Ohio and dug it deep enough, I would end up in China. I'm surprised nobody has yet dug a tunnel to smuggle in goods from China and bypass customs and import duty.

Why should we go around the outside of the globe, when we can take a shortcut through the middle?

Maybe we could set up vacuum tubes to suck products back and forth from one side of the world to the other. Maybe people, too. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Last time I heard, scientific thought was that the center of the Earth is a glob of molten iron a few thousand miles in diameter.

Really? Then I guess we would have to go through that area really FAST!!

<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Mary, you should make use of the Holtzman Effect and fold space to get to China.

"If the world was indeed flat the measured angle to any star would remain the same no matter where you were on the flat world. Because the globe is actually round the measured angle to any star changes as you move towards or away from it. For example the angle to the north star gets smaller (in relation to Horizontal) as you go further south. This would not happen on a flat world. This is just basic geometry stuff."

Hang about a minute, if you have a “relatively” fixed point in space, such as a star, and the angle to it is measured between a point on a flat plane (the earth if it was flat) and that star, then, if the point of measurement on the flat plane is shifted, then the angle measured to that star WILL be different.
Any way, sailers only needed to “navigate” across the seas centuries ago because they couldn’t afford the tickets to fly with Quantas.?

And if the world was in fact a giant pancake, my kids would have eaten it by now. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

To quote Martin Luther when referring to Copernicus “People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens and the firmament, the sun and the moon. This fool wishes to reverse the entire scheme of astrology. The sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still not the earth”.

In fact several astronomers where burned at the stake as heretics for claiming the earth revolved around the sun. And there was a ban on the notion until the early 1800’s. I'd venture to guess people were not nearly so open minded back then as they are today... <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Quote
[In fact several astronomers where burned at the stake as heretics for claiming the earth revolved around the sun. And there was a ban on the notion until the early 1800’s. I'd venture to guess people were not nearly so open-minded back then as they are today...]

If you think that “we” today are an “enlightened” people, talk to a few “Christian fundamentalists” about the origins of the world and you may think that you ARE back in the “dark ages”,
For that matter try the practicing beliefs of fundamentalist Muslims and their interpretation of the Koran to see what “closed mindedness” also is,
If you want bigotry and bias then check out the “Arian nations”
For true “enlightenment” how about the “teachings” of George W Bush??
The KKK?
etc, etc.
The list goes on and on and ----

Prime minister John Howard ?

Wouter

Careful Wouter, some unkind person may add your name (or mine for that matter)
To be considered "reasonable, un biased, open minded, non bigeted, fair etc" is generally a personal point of view any way, and depends on which side of the fence you sit at the time. My "Terrorists" are some one elses "patriots" and vice versa, history is always written by the victor.

One group thinks their diety can walk on water. The other believes horses can fly.

But we all know exactly who the realists are, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Frisbeetarians?

there is a great book called "Cod" which describes cod fishing and its imporance to 1000-1400 AD Europe..
It it it suggests the Basques knew about the east coast of America. Since this is the area of the great Cod grounds... Basques never told about the western lands as that would allow other fishermen to plunder the basque cash cow!!

Actually it was Wouters ancestors and the rest of Europe that thought the World was flat. The Pollies had been sailing the far reaches of the Pacific for centuries when the Anglo-Saxons finally got brave enough to sail out of sight of land.

Cooks notes suggested he thought the Tahitian catamarans capable of 20 knots! He said they were impossible to out run or out manouver....
Oh and we all like catamarans....and who created them???????
Tahiti when discovered by the French had 24 hour lighthouses and over 350 of what the French desciribed as large Ships.

The eating each other comment is just amazing as Europe has a long history of Cannibalism including families who killed lone travellers and butchered them and sold the meat to other travellers. The Crusaders did their best to barbeque and eat a whole city. Christians that they were.

Ignorance often opens peoples mouths wide and they need to to get their feet in.

One of my cats is Named Galileo in thanks to his leaving the nonesence of the church back in the Dark ages......and it was called the DARK ages because of what the church insisted on people. Thank God for the age of enlightenment!

You are playing a little fast and loose with the facts here Warbird.



That would make them YOUR ancestors as well Warbird unless you are Maori. But lets not forget that the Greecks had already calculated the circumference of the earth quite accurately, subsequent European peoples developped a navigational system based on this knowlegde. The knowlegde that the earth was round was only suppressed in midevil times and the early renaissance. Suppressing is the right word here as the Church never succeeded at eradicating this knowlegde, although it did manage to have it made a closely guarded guild secret of maritime navigators.




Anglo-Saxons have a big mouth and claim far more then they actually achieved. The first explorers were the Portugese followed closely by the Spanish. Then came the Dutch (who discovered large swaths of south east asia and Oceania. Hence the names like Tasmania (Van Diemens land), Arnhem land in Australia and even the name New Zealand itself (after first being called Staten Landt and then Nieuw Zeeland).

For more read this short article : http://history-nz.org/discovery1.html

The Brits and French joined the party later often still using many Dutch maps.

I can't name a single land that was discovered by the English. And if they did then it will be nothing more then an atol or small island (Cook, polynesia). The only exception here being the eastern seaboard of the United states, but its existance had already been established by Spanish navigators who largely ignored it from then onward because they didn't see any commericial benefits to do so. Even then large parts of North America were French and Dutch "discoveries". hence the names New Orleans, Louisiana, Illinois and Staten Island (remember Staten Landt), Brooklyn (Breukelen), Harlem (Haarlem) and a score of Dutch town names in North West America. Florida was Spanish as were large portions of Califorina, Texas and the states in between.

What the Brits (Anglo-Saxons) were good at was to shoot their way into possesing new land (colonies), most of it discovered earlier by others. They were largely helped by local wars on the European mainland, especially the Napoleanic wars if I remember correctly. These weakened the other naval powers while leaving England largely unaffected.




This is new to me. This was very heavily disapproved off by the church, same as with selling your children. It may have happened but it was certainly no widespread culturally accepted phenomenon. It was actively punished.





The crusaders did massacre whole cities without a worry but I seriously doubt if they referred to cannibalism unless when faced with imminent starvation, which happened during the first crusade. It was never a BBQ kind of feasting of "doing their best" as you put it. This would have been surprising and most crusaders were extremely pious people, although they did reguard pagan peoples as sufficiently heretic to slaughter them by the thousants.




So you tell me.

Having spent 18 months helping to redevlop the Maori court and Pacific section of the Auckland Museum, the most important museum on the planet when it comes to the study of this subject I am really clear about the facts. I am Anglo-Saxon and have not trouble with that. I am well aware of Tasman etc and that they are well after the Polly seafaring explorers, hence my comments. What I do take seriously are what amount to racist commentary which mirrors that I listened to in that museum coming from people of European extraction who could just not stand the idea that that Pacific Islanders were well ahead of Europeans in exploring the area and who want forever to believe the Pacific peoples just got on rafts and crashed into islands in dumb luck.
I do not need to argue the pitch and toss here Wouter as I have not had to read these things as I have discussed them in some circumstances with the writers of the books and have made the very mounts some of the artifacts and boats sit on.

As to my comments on Cannibalism my reference is a book called "Flesh and Blood" but you could just google it and save me having to re read and quote pages. You guess that the Crusaders would not but your guess is wrong, so do your homework.

In this country people often remark disparagingly against Maori because of their eating of others. I always point out this book and lend it to them if needed.

Our history is clear that many English, Russian, German and American sailors found the temptation to eat human flesh the Maori offered at feasts too irresistable to say no to. They have chosen to do this after knowing better but Maori were just partaking in a long held cultural tradition.

Wouter, google Maara Crusades cannibalism

That should read cannibalism Maarra with 2 rs.
While it seems the adults were broiled the Crusaders put the babies and chil;dren on spits and bartbequed them.

You could read 'Consuming Passions" a book I think dedicated to Cannibalism in early modern Europe and "Cannibalism; a modern tabboo".

I would also remind you that the Catholic mass itself is a cannibal ritual where the people of the church are emplored to eat the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

I dont think Kiwi's where very proud of their history themselves, I went to highschool there for a year (near Whangarei) and dont remember a single history lesson.

Funny how a theme on the ancients great art/skill of finding new lands in the pacific turn into a discussion on who is the least evil.
Reading history I have not found one example of peaceful and 'succesful' colonialization. No doubt church dogma and western religion played a big part in how the west conquered lands and people all over the planet back then. We still carry some of the dogmas accepted and used back in the 14. century with us today, as pointed to by Warbird. Racism is still alive, and as ugly as ever. We in the western world should all be very grateful that the renaissance came to us trough some great men (men, as in both men and women), if not we would still judge each other by the bible. Not much has changed since then, but education do tend to help.

I have got to give one to the hometeam. Norse explorers relied on the sun and stars to navigate across oceans, but they also had "travel stones", probably magnets. When they came to Newfoundland they named the natives "skræling" which in modern norwegian language means a sickly and thin person.. Racism as it's best as the settlements on Newfoundland was bested by the natives and an incredibly long line of supply.
Trivia: Newfoundland translates well to "new found land" in norwegian.

If you look at wikipedias short piece on history of navigation, the western bias is clearly there (but there are some pieces on polynesian and micronesian navigation in other sections): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_navigation


Hope the racism and navigational issues are solved til the Global Challenge at Zandvoort <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I think that is a fair obsrvation as the colonialsm that Wouter was talking about sits uncomfortably on people who are generally liberal and generous.
I paint about our history and politics often and I think we have some of the most exciting characters to be read about.
We should embrace our history more and learn to love our forfathers warts and all.
It is difficult for the Maori mindset to do this also as they have a strong tradition of Utu which is to balance slights felt done even many generations after the original wound.

As an asside, I never mentioned evil, as I am with Shakespear on this "nothing is either good nor bad as it is thinking makes it so." I think that Europe carries with it an un gly history of elitism. When people talk about the savagery of Maoris I always point to the Spanish Inquisition, The English habit of hanging, drawing and quartering and head put on a pike. I would much rather have my head cleaved open and die instantly and be eaten.

I am ranting because it is winter and we have been having the worst storm in 150 years.

I will post photos soon of my freinds 75 foot wave peircing, solid wing cat which was punnished for being so tall. You will find that much more interesting.

That may have nothing to do with whether it was taught or not :-)

Actually my recollection (70's) is that NZ history (pre-20th century) was mostly taught prior to high school and reasonably intensively. Unfortunately I don't remember much if any 20th century NZ history being taught in the compulsory curriculum (which also doesn't mean it wasn't taught :-)) - I have had to read about this as an adult.

I just recently heard that a church made a precise move and elected to pay $660,000,000.00 USD to compensate victims of their recent practices in order to avoid being brought before the United States courts to face charges of child abuse.

Is this the same bunch that believes God only listens to them?

Wait. . .there are a lot of those! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

This would be the Catholic church. and they did not make the payment to avoid being taken to court. They made the victims wait until the CEO was going to have to testify and THEN they paid out.
What that church does not understand is that that is the first wave. After the sexual abuse there will be class actions for spiritual abuse as they have stolen the ability for people to investigate and decide on their own spirituality by telling them that those such as buddists are evil and the devils children.

And yes, all Christian think they will go to heaven and the rest of us will go to the devil.....and burn for ever....

I'm pretty sure that would require the existence of legislation against "spiritual abuse" (however you choose to define that), and therefore require the state to determine what are, and are not, acceptable religious beliefs. The thought makes me shudder.

Anyhow, I think most people are here to talk about sailing...

Sailing is a religious experience. Of course, we do have the multihull types who will go straight to heaven and those leaner heretics.

We are sailors true but sometimes we are aloud to think outside that square. If I am outa line just tell me and I'll flag it. Some people have shown an interest in it. It would not require defining what are acceptable spiritual beliefs but how those beliefs are taught and reinforced. Everyone should be aloud to believe what they like for sure. The Catholic church stole that from me as I was too terrified to think of investigating any other form of spiritual way of being. When I was five through ten I was being told every day that there were demons everywhere waiting for me on the way home and even in my home and that I had to keep a constant conversation with god to stay safe.

If I went and told your five year old every day that demons were everywhere and that your child would burn in hell if the demons got to him or her you would rightly come to my house and whack me....hard. Why can churches prey so clinically on children and leave such terrible visions on their young mind? There is a huge social cost with thousands of people with PTS.

I am not only talking bout Christianity. We can see the results other religions have created with mad dogma and the way they are delivered it.

I see it like this.
There are only two levels of evil.
1. Evil
2. Not Evil
All of mankind falls in catagory 1. All of everything else falls in catagory 2.


Have a nice day <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Miguel

I read an interesting book about 20 years ago, The Songs Of Satawal(?). I think the navigator was blind. The knowledge was passed on in song. One part that I remember, was the old guy saying he could tell the type/direction of the waves, by the way his balls felt!

surely you speak of his golf balls and not his tennis balls!

If felt was involved they were probably billiard balls.

I never felt anything.

"For swells to remain perceptible after travelling hundreds of miles, they must have their origin in regions of strong and persistent winds, the more important swells originating in "permanent" weather systems such as the Trades. . . The other main source is the Southern Ocean belt. . .

Holding course by swells seems always to be a matter more of feel than sight. . . Puluwatans too 'steer by the feel of the waves under the canoe, not visually'. One might perhaps be tempted to refer to keeping course by the swells as 'steering by the seat of one's pants', if it were not for the more anatomically specific detail supplied by the veteran island skipper Captain Ward, who writes, 'I have heard from several sources, the the most sensitive balance was a man's testicles, and that when at night or when the horizon was obscured, or inside the cabin this was the method used to find the focus of the swells off an island' . . .

Examples of the practice of orientatin by swells can be collected from virtually any part of the Pacific." [i][/i] We, the Navigators, pp.84-86.

Clearly, we would all be better to sail "commando"!