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What would you do if....?

5K views 28 replies 15 participants last post by  tempest 
#1 ·
Just for fun....

What if you could revive an old sailing captain from the 18th or 17th century, and spend a week with him? After finding out if Pusser's rum truly is the same as it was back then, what would you ask him? What would you most want to show him about sailing today? Let's assume he's already had several days to spend with a modern merchant vessel captain, and got to power a Maersk across a few miles of open sea, and got all that out of his system.

Dacron?

Bow-thrusters?

GPS?

How do you think an old-tyme square rigger captain could handle a modern sloop?

Well, back to the Pussers.....
 
#2 ·
How do you think an old-tyme square rigger captain could handle a modern sloop?
I'd think he could probably handle it just fine (and sail it 'by feel' better than many people I know) ...but would be absolutely horrified at the thought of sailing something so touchy, flimsy and so generally unseaworthy anywhere out of sight of land - and I wouldn't like to be his crew!

To be honest, I think I'd learn more from him than he'd ever learn from me.
 
#7 · (Edited)
I'd like to know how they were able to navigate without the ability (or sometimes even the knowledge) to determine longitude.
The Lunar Distance Method was introduced in "about 1767" as an accurate way to determine longitude and either Octants or Sextants were already in regular use, meaning Ships Captains of those days needed to be very good at spherical trigonometry - something I suspect most of us would fail at (I would!).

The mind boggles when you think of the pages and pages of calculations that the early maritime explorers (Cook and others) were required to do to accurately chart the coastline of a country - accurately enough that modern satellite imaging changed charts of this region very little indeed!

Before 1767 they just stayed a long, long way away from land and used their knowledge of the sea and sky (colour, temperature, wave and cloud patterns), compass course and distance run to tell them approximately where they were.

How did they do it? Basically, with no "lazy" way (like GPS) to safely determine where they were going, the ones that lived to tell the tale were just very, very good - they had to be. ;)
 
#4 ·
Just for fun....

What if you could revive an old sailing captain from the 18th or 17th century, and spend a week with him? After finding out if Pusser's rum truly is the same as it was back then, what would you ask him? .
to have a bath and put on clean clothes ?
 
#10 ·
I wouldn't waste my time or his asking him how they did it without GPS - it's of little value to me or him. But the OP's is a nice question.

If I wanted to show off technology I guess I'd show him Google Earth.

If I wanted to show off boat equipment I think I'd show him the auto-pilot.

If I wanted to show him sailing technique I'd take the boat to weather and beat at 8 knots.

I wouldn't waste time with Pussers (other than maybe sharing some) because nothing has really changed there.
 
#11 ·
If I wanted to show off technology I guess I'd show him Google Earth.

If I wanted to show off boat equipment I think I'd show him the auto-pilot.

If I wanted to show him sailing technique I'd take the boat to weather and beat at 8 knots.

I wouldn't waste time with Pussers (other than maybe sharing some) because nothing has really changed there.
Google Earth would probably give him a heart attack rendering the rest of the discussion pretty pointless, but otherwise.. ("Vaat? The earth is round?!?" :eek: )

+1 from me. :D
 
#13 ·
I could have sworn that calculating longitude at sea wasn't possible until the advent of accurate chronometers in the 1800's. A while back, I read the account of the whale ship Essex, and in it, most captains couldn't calculate longitude until their second or third voyages (if at all) and some captains left on their first voyage without the skills to accurately determine latitude. No real knowledge of global weather or current patterns, primitive navigation tools, quill pen and long division for calculations… Yes, I think that 17th and 18th century navigation is fascinating.
 
#14 ·
Well.. If that were true, Captain Cook, for example, would never have found Tahiti (and he wasn't the first there) and could never have accurately charted New Zealand and the east coast of Oz - in 1770/1771.

You probably quite correct that most captains couldn't calculate longitude correctly and hence approached a lee shore at their peril - but that's only because they couldn't do the math, not because the knowledge wasn't there.

It's extraordinarily easy for us thesedays to just decide "I'm going to take a few weeks off and sail across the Pacific", forgetting just how much heavy duty research over hundreds of years has gone into making it a safe trip. ;)
 
#15 ·
Did a little sleuthing. Per Wikipedia, Harrison didn’t invent his H5 chronometer until 1773. The Royal Navy didn’t widely distribute them amongst the fleet until 1825. Up until that point, navigators were using the very much less accurate lunar method for determining longitude. That is why I find the navigation of those times to be so interesting. Imagine to “hit” something like Hawaii or Tahiti, you sail until you cross a certain latitude, then head west until you make landfall. How those early explorers ever found the islands is amazing. The design of square rigged ships haven’t changed much in the last 300-400 years but navigation certainly has.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Did a little sleuthing. Per Wikipedia, Harrison didn't invent his H5 chronometer until 1773. The Royal Navy didn't widely distribute them amongst the fleet until 1825. Up until that point, navigators were using the very much less accurate lunar method for determining longitude.
Terribly minor nit-pick, but just to correct the record here: The Lunar Distance Method is a far more accurate way to determine longitude than using the chronometers of the day - after all, once they were invented, it was the Lunar Distance Method they used to adjust the chronometers!

..the only downside is it takes a few pages of extremely complicated (at least they are to me!) maths calculations to get a result. But then I was never very good at maths. ;)
 
#17 ·
Refrigeration.
 
#19 ·
Hartley, I think we are both trying hard to agree with each other on the skills and daring these mariners must have possessed in order to cross oceans in their day. It is interesting comment about the lunar method. Was it relatively more accurate because the chronometers of the time were such poor keepers of time as to make them impractical to use in a marine environment? And why was the Royal Navy offering such a big prize for the invention of a practical chronometer if they already had a better way of determining longitude? Imagine a skipper of that time working out logarithms in longhand using quill and ink by the light of a whale oil lamp. I read once that they would calculate their equations until they two answers that matched. I remember reading about the clipper ship Swordfish’s attempt at breaking Flying Cloud’s New York to San Francisco record of which they were set to break handily until they chose to head up the California coast instead swinging out 400-500 miles to the west. All because they didn’t understand (or comprehend?) the North Pacific High weather phenomenon.
 
#21 · (Edited)
Hartley, I think we are both trying hard to agree with each other on the skills and daring these mariners must have possessed in order to cross oceans in their day. It is interesting comment about the lunar method. Was it relatively more accurate because the chronometers of the time were such poor keepers of time as to make them impractical to use in a marine environment? And why was the Royal Navy offering such a big prize for the invention of a practical chronometer if they already had a better way of determining longitude?
Skills and daring indeed!! :eek:

From what I've read, it was because the chronometers of the time were such poor keepers of time in a marine environment. These were mechanical devices, remember, and very subject to vibration (ie. thumping off the back of a wave) or temperature fluctuations (ticking faster or slower). Some even had to be wound up at exactly the same time each day to compensate for the main-spring unwinding at different rates. IIRC, Cook took three with him - just in case - and found some were better than others. In this part of the world, being out by a minute in a week or so is more than sufficient to put you on the rocks...

The huge prize you mention was to come up with something that didn't require pages of calculations.. because, even back then, not everyone who went to sea was good at mathematics. If you look into it, taking a Noon Sight isn't rocket science, but the longitude calculations to go with it make rocket science look easy! :)
 
#20 ·
Getting an accurate fix from the rise time of the sun or a star has got to beat calculating the moons relative position to other steller bodies. A good watch reduces finding longitude from hours of work to a few minutes sighting.
 
#22 · (Edited)
Such a pity, then, that they didn't have good watches.. although they look fantastic on the shelf.

..and to think that the 10-buck wrist-watch on your arm is more accurate than any method the old seafarers ever had of keeping time at sea - right up to the middle of the 20th century! A frightening thought... :)

..with apologies to the OP for the unintended thread hijack. :D
 
#25 ·
As for lunar distance, I suspect the math is not really all that hard. Just like modern celestial navigation there are zillions of tables where all you have to do is reference several numbers in several tables, add them up in various ways, and use the results to references several more numbers in several more tables. Before mechanical calculators (probably even up to the age of electronics) all practical math was done by looking up numbers in tables, and addition.

The reason chronometers are preferable is that the tables procedures are still time-consuming and error-prone (look up the wrong number, copy the number wrong, add the number wrong), so any means you can contrive to remove table lookups is a good idea.

As for what to show your captain, I'd agree with folks who said dacron but I'd go further and say plastics in general, especially fiberglass. Imagine not having to reapply oakum anymore. As for electronics-type stuff, while maps and Google Earth would be impressive, they did already have maps and did know the Earth was round, so the witchcraft involved in animating it is just that -- animation. Might as well show him "the talkies". I would turn on the radio and give him a few minutes to find the man hiding the bilges and failing to accurately predict the weather.
 
#26 ·
Show him my inboard diesel.

I find it amazing how these capains sailed ships up the Chesapeake or through the Straits of Magellan without aux power. Especially if they were the first ship sailing through these unknown waters. They would have no idea if they were going to hit shallow water or poor winds. They were on their own with no aux power and no help if they needed it.
 
#27 ·
Show him my inboard diesel.

I find it amazing how these capains sailed ships up the Chesapeake or through the Straits of Magellan without aux power. Especially if they were the first ship sailing through these unknown waters. They would have no idea if they were going to hit shallow water or poor winds. They were on their own with no aux power and no help if they needed it.
Whilst I'm sure he'd be amazed at the small, compact engine size... the rest of your post is not quite true:

They had large rowing-boats (more than one) and plenty of crew to provide sufficient auxilliary power (10 man-power?) to get them out shallow water or poor winds - and the seamanship with wind/tide to know how best to do it - but going there in the first place with either no charts or poor charts, is IMO far more gutsy. ;)

It was quite common for the first explorers (Cook et al) to re-draw someone else's charts as they sailed along. Scary stuff!
 
#29 ·
The crew on many of the early exploration ships were indentured. Many of them were debtors, prisoners, etc. They were more often than not poorly treated.
Before they discovered that things like cabbage, prevented scurvy...many were lost to that horribly painful death.
Punishment was swift and cruel..living conditions were horrible. forget personal hygiene...the ship had to stink to high heavens.

I think 5 ? members of Magellens Voyage returned alive?

Drake would be one of the characters, that I'd like to meet. He raided the spanish stole their gold, their ships, and more importantly their pilots while he looked for the North passage.....

They would probably marvel at ..just being able to take a hot shower..
and have fresh food keep under refrigeration..
 
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