Indo-Pacific beginning at around 3000 BC Navigation in the
Indo-Pacific began with the maritime migrations of the
Austronesians from
Taiwan who spread southwards into
Island Southeast Asia and
Island Melanesia during a period between 3000 and 1000 BC. Their first long-distance voyaging was the colonization of
Micronesia from the
Philippines at around 1500 BC. By about 900 BC their descendants had spread more than 6,000 kilometers across the Pacific, reaching
Tonga and
Samoa. In this region, a distinctive
Polynesian culture developed. Within the next few centuries Polynesians reached
Hawaii,
New Zealand,
Easter Island and possibly
South America. Polynesian navigators used a range of tools and methods, including observation of birds,
star navigation, and use of waves and swells to detect nearby land. Songs, mythological stories, and star charts were used to help people remember important navigational information. Meanwhile, Austronesians in Island Southeast Asia began the first true maritime trade networks by about 1000 BC, linking
China,
southern India, the
Middle East, and coastal
eastern Africa. Settlers from
Borneo reached
Madagascar by the early 1st millennium AD and colonized it by AD 500.
Mediterranean during the Archaic period (800–480 BC) Sailors navigating in the Mediterranean made use of several techniques to determine their location, including staying in sight of land and understanding of the winds and their tendencies.
Minoans of
Crete are an example of an early Western civilization that used celestial navigation. Their palaces and mountaintop
sanctuaries exhibit architectural features that align with the rising sun on the
equinoxes, as well as the rising and setting of particular stars. The Minoans made sea voyages to the island of
Thera and to
Egypt. Both of these trips would have taken more than a day's sail for the Minoans and would have left them traveling by night across open water. The
Greek poet
Aratus wrote in his
Phainomena in the third century BC detailed positions of the constellations as written by
Eudoxos. The positions described do not match the locations of the stars during Aratus' or Eudoxos' time for the Greek mainland, but some argue that they match the sky from
Crete during the
Bronze Age. Around 1000 BC the constellation
Draco would have been closer to the
North Pole than
Polaris. The pole stars were used to navigate because they did not disappear below the horizon and could be seen consistently throughout the night. In the mid-1st century AD
Lucan writes of
Pompey who questions a sailor about the use of stars in navigation. The sailor replies with his description of the use of
circumpolar stars to navigate by. To navigate along a degree of latitude a sailor would have needed to find a circumpolar star above that degree in the sky. For example,
Apollonius would have used
β Draconis to navigate as he traveled west from the mouth of the
Alpheus River to
Syracuse. A competent astronomer and geographer,
polar ice,
Germanic tribes and possibly
Stonehenge. Pytheas also introduced the idea of distant "
Thule" to the geographic imagination and his account is the earliest to state that the Moon is the cause of the tides.
Nearchos's celebrated voyage from
India to
Susa after
Alexander's expedition in India is preserved in
Arrian's account, the
Indica. Greek navigator
Eudoxus of Cyzicus explored the Arabian Sea for
Ptolemy VIII, king of the
Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty in
Egypt. According to
Poseidonius, later reported in
Strabo's
Geography, the
monsoon wind system of the Indian Ocean was first sailed by Eudoxus of Cyzicus in 118 or 116 BC.
Nautical charts and textual descriptions known as sailing directions have been in use in one form or another since the sixth century BC. Nautical charts using stereographic and orthographic projections date back to the second century BC. There is a lack of agreement whether the furthest limit of Hanno's explorations was
Mount Cameroon or Guinea's 890-metre (2910-foot) Mount Kakulima. Nonetheless, Hanno's maritime travels limit may have been further north, as there are well documented difficulties with the return travel from the regions south of
cape Chaunar, which, up to the early 15th century, "had hitherto been the non plus ultra or impassable limit of European navigation"
Asia In the
South China Sea and Indian Ocean, a navigator could take advantage of the fairly constant monsoon winds to judge direction. This made long one-way voyages possible twice a year. About 1000 BC,
Nusantaran Austronesian developed
tanja sail and
junk sail. The invention of these types of sail made sailing around the western coast of Africa possible, because of their ability to sail against the wind. Ca. 200 AD in
Han dynasty,
Chuan (
junk ships) are developed in China. In ca. 50–500 AD
Malay and
Javanese trading fleets reached Madagascar. Also brought with them was the
Ma'anyan dayak people, as labourers and slaves. The
Malagasy language originated from Southeast
Barito language, and
Ma'anyan language is its closest relative, with numerous Malay and Javanese loanwords. By the 8th or 9th century A.D., ancient Indonesian ships may have already reached as far as
Ghana, likely using the outrigger
Borobudur ship and the K'un-lun po or
jong. ==Medieval age of navigation== in
Cambridge, England. , possibly the Icelandic medieval sunstone used to locate the sun in the sky when obstructed from view. The
Arab Empire significantly contributed to
navigation, and had
trade networks extending from the Atlantic Ocean and
Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Indian Ocean and China Sea in the east, Apart from the
Nile,
Tigris and
Euphrates, navigable rivers in the Islamic regions were uncommon, so transport by sea was very important.
Islamic geography and navigational sciences made use of a magnetic
compass and a rudimentary instrument known as a
kamal, used for
celestial navigation and for measuring the
altitudes and
latitudes of the
stars. The kamal itself was simple to construct. It was a rectangular piece of either bone or wood which had a string with 9 consecutive knots attached to it. Another instrument available, developed by the Arabs as well, was the quadrant. Also a celestial navigation device, it was originally developed for astronomy and later transitioned to navigation. When combined with detailed maps of the period, sailors were able to sail across oceans rather than skirt along the coast. However, there are no records of open ocean Atlantic sailing, and their activity focused on Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and across to the Bay of Bengal. The origins of the
caravel ship, developed and used for long-distance travel by the Portuguese, and later by the rest of Iberians, since the 15th century, also date back to the
qarib used by
Andalusian explorers by the 13th century. The sea lanes between
India and neighboring lands were the usual form of trade for many centuries, and are responsible for the widespread influence of
Indian culture to the societies of Southeast Asia. Powerful navies included those of the
Maurya,
Satavahana,
Chola,
Vijayanagara,
Kalinga,
Maratha and
Mughal Empire.
Vikings used polarization and the
Sunstone to allow navigation of their ships by locating the Sun even in a completely overcast sky. This special
mineral was talked about in several 13th–14th-century written sources in
Iceland, some centuries after the carbon-dated, early-11th-century Norse settlement of
L'Anse aux Meadows in northernmost
Newfoundland had been briefly established. In China between 1040 and 1117, the
magnetic compass was being developed and applied to navigation. This let masters continue sailing a course when the weather limited visibility of the sky. The true mariner's compass using a pivoting needle in a dry box was invented in Europe no later than 1300. Nautical charts called
portolan charts began to appear in
Italy at the end of the 13th century. However, their use did not seem to spread quickly: there are no reports of the use of a nautical chart on an English vessel until 1489. is a map made between 1457 and 1459 by the
Venetian monk
Fra Mauro. It is a circular
planisphere drawn on
parchment and set in a wooden frame, about two meters in diameter. was an ancient precursor to the modern marine sextant. The commercial activities of
Portugal in the early 15th century marked an epoch of distinct progress in practical navigation for Europeans. opening later, at the beginning of the 16th century, a network of ocean routes covering the Atlantic, the Indian and the western Pacific oceans, from the North Atlantic and
South America, to
Japan and
Southeast Asia. The Portuguese campaign of Atlantic navigation is one of the earliest examples of a systematic scientific large project, sustained over many decades. This program of study recruited several men of exceptional ability, had a well-defined set of objectives, and was open to experimental confirmation through the success or otherwise of subsequent navigations.
Initial Period – Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic: Duarte Pacheco Pereira The main problem in navigating, by sail alone, back from the south of the
Canary Islands (or south of
Boujdour), is due to the change in the regime of winds and currents: the North Atlantic gyre and the Equatorial counter current will push south along the northwest bulge of Africa, while the uncertain winds where the Northeast trades meet the Southeast trades (the doldrums) leave a sailing ship to the mercy of the currents. Together, prevalent current and wind make northwards progress very difficult or impossible. In this context, the Portuguese discovered the two large
volta do mar (meaning literally
turn of the sea but also
return from the sea) currents and trade winds of North and of South
Atlantic Ocean (approximately in the first half and in the late 15th century respectively), that paved the way to reach the New World and return to Europe, as well as to circumnavigate Africa in western open sea, in future voyages of discovery, avoiding contrary winds and currents. The 'rediscovery' of the
Azores islands in 1427 is merely a reflection of the heightened strategic importance of the islands, now sitting on the return route from the western coast of Africa (sequentially called 'volta de Guiné' and 'volta da Mina'); and the references to the
Sargasso Sea (also called at the time 'Mar da Baga'), to the west of the
Azores, in 1436, reveals the western extent of the return route. To resolve the difficulties involved in the return trip, a systematic exploration of the coasts and open sea conditions was undertaken, lasting until the final years of the 15th century. An early example of such systematic criteria is found in
Duarte Pacheco Pereira, navigator, military commander and learned writer of ‘
Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis’ (1505–1508), where he reports his and other's exploration of the African coast and of the open seas of the south Atlantic: In the '
Esmeraldo's introduction: "
what belongs to cosmography and seamanship I hope to spell out (…) ...how does a headland or place lay in respect of another; and this so that this work takes order and grounding; and the coast may be more safely navigated; and likewise the knowledge of the lands and where lay the shallows which for this it is much necessary to know; also of the sounders performed in some places what their depth is and also the different of the bottoms, if they are mudd or sand, or stone, or pebbles, or sharp edges, or shells (burgao = Livona pica) or what quality is such sounding; and being known what is the distance from the shallows to the coastline; and likewise the tides, if they are from northeast and southwest like those from our spain, or is they are from north and south, or west and east, or northwest and southeast, which for the purpose of entering and exiting ports and river-mouths are absolutely necessary; and also de measurements from the poles from which can be known how many degrees are the places apart and the latitude relative to the equator; and also the nature of the people of this ethiopia (Africa) and their mode of life and I will also talk about the commerce that could be had in this land The repositories for the observations made were the '
Roteiros' or maritime route-maps. The earliest Roteiro known is part of a collection of several manuscripts by Valentim Fernandes (1485) with the coast up to the delta of the Niger river in present-day Nigeria, followed by the '
Esmeraldo...' (1505–08) cited above; several 'roteiros' included in the 'Livro de Marinharia e Tratado da Agulha de Marear' (Treatise of Seamanship and of the magnetic needle) by João de Lisboa (1514); roteiros included in the 'Regimento de Navegacão...' (Regiment of Navigation) by André Pires (1520); roteiros for Brazil by Pero Lopes de Sousa (1530–32), Roteiro da Carreira da Índia' (Route-book of the travel to/from India) by Diogo de Afonso (1536); and the roteiros by D.
João de Castro (see below): Lisbon to Goa (1538), Goa to Diu (northwest India) (1538–39, and the Red Sea (1541) The extent of the explorations undertaken is again reported in the '
Esmeraldo...', on the 2nd page of the 2nd chapter: "
… Year of our Lord of 1498 where Your Highness commanded us to explore the western area going past the greatness of the ocean sea; where is found and explored a very large firm land with many and large adjoining islands, which extends from seventy degrees of latitude from the equator line towards the arctic pole (…) and goes further of twenty eight degrees of latitude from the equator line towards the antarctic pole (…) from any place in Europe or Africa and going across all the ocean in a straight line to the west by the rules of seamanship for thirty six degrees of longitude, which are six hundred and forty eight leagues of route counting at eighteen leagues per degree." It is unlikely that the exploration of the open seas of the southern Atlantic was made in a single voyage, particularly when the route taken by
Vasco da Gama in 1497 was significantly different from the one taken by
Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500, each being adapted to the season of departure. This adaptation shows an understanding of the cycle of yearly variations in winds and currents in the southern Atlantic. Furthermore, there were systematic expeditions pushing into the western Northern Atlantic (Teive, 1454; Vogado, 1462; Teles, 1474; Ulmo, 1486) all suggest a well planned and systematic activity. The most significant consequence of this systematised knowledge was the negotiation of the
Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, moving the line of demarcation 270 leagues to the west (from 100 to 370 leagues west of the Azores) with the consequence of affirming the Portuguese claim to
Brazil and its dominance of the Atlantic.
Mature Period – Portuguese exploration of the Indic: João de Castro By the early 16th century there were regular voyages between Lisbon and the Indic. The knowledge of the Atlantic developed by accretion, with the systematic exploration moving into the Indic. The corollary of this activity involved a group of remarkable men established around the academic (mathematician, cosmographer)
Pedro Nunes, and the explorer and ‘lead investigator’
João de Castro (navigator, military commander and Vice-Roy of India); such men included
Andre de Resende (scholar),
João de Barros (chronist and scholar), and possibly
Damião de Gois (a diplomat, scholar and friend of
Erasmus). The theoretical works of
Pedro Nunes (1502–1578) achieved the mathematical determination of the
loxodromic curve: the shortest course between two points on the surface of a sphere represented onto a two-dimensional map, clearing the way for the establishment of the Mercator projection. It is
Pedro Nunes who states, in his contemporaneous "Treatise of the Sphere" (1537), that Portuguese navigations were not an adventurous endeavour:
"nam se fezeram indo a acertar: mas partiam os nossos mareantes muy ensinados e prouidos de estromentos e regras de astrologia e geometria que sam as cousas que os cosmographos ham dadar apercebidas (...) e leuaua cartas muy particularmente rumadas e na ja as de que os antigos vsauam" (were not done by chance: but our seafarers departed well taught and provided with instruments and rules of astrology (astronomy) and geometry which were matters the cosmographers would provide (...) and they took charts with exact routes and no longer those used by the ancient). Nunes credibility rests on being personally involved in the instruction of pilots and senior seafarers from 1527 onwards.
João de Castro's work took place along the route of the
Indian Ocean (1538), particularly the
Arabian Sea with the
Persian Gulf and the
Red Sea (1538–39 and 1541). King
John II of Portugal continued this effort, forming a committee on navigation. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the
Crown of Castile and then the "unified"
Crown of Spain was also in the vanguard of European global exploration and colonial expansion. The Spanish Crown opened trade routes across the oceans, specially the transatlantic expeditions of
Christopher Columbus on behalf of Castile, from 1492. The Crown of Castile, under
Charles I of Spain, also sponsored the first expedition of
world circumnavigation in 1521. The enterprise was led by Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan and completed by the Spanish navigator
Juan Sebastián Elcano after the former's death in the
Philippines in 1521. The fleet of seven ships sailed from
Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Southern
Spain in 1519, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and after several stopovers rounded the southern tip of
South America. Some ships were lost, but the remaining fleet continued across the
Pacific making a number of discoveries including
Guam and the Philippines. By then, only two galleons were left from the original seven. The
Victoria led by Elcano sailed across the Indian Ocean and north along the coast of Africa, to finally arrive in Spain in 1522, three years after its departure. The
Trinidad sailed east from the Philippines, trying to find a maritime path back to the
Americas, but was unsuccessful. The eastward route across the Pacific, also known as the
tornaviaje (return trip) was only discovered forty years later, when Spanish cosmographer
Andrés de Urdaneta sailed from the Philippines, north to parallel 39°, and hit the eastward
Kuroshio Current which took its galleon across the Pacific. He arrived in
Acapulco on October 8, 1565, The trips of exploration led to trade flourishing across the Atlantic Ocean between Spain and America and across the Pacific Ocean between Asia-Pacific and
Mexico via the
Philippines. Later,
Andrés de Urdaneta discovered the northern Pacific's
volta do mar return voyage. The compass, a cross-staff or astrolabe, a method to correct for the altitude of
Polaris and rudimentary nautical charts were all the tools available to a navigator at the time of
Christopher Columbus. In 1577, a more advanced technique was mentioned: the
chip log. In 1594,
John Davis published an 80-page pamphlet called ''The Seaman's Secrets'' which, among other things describes
great circle sailing. with calculated mathematical tables which made it possible to use in practice. The book made clear why only with this projection would a constant bearing correspond to a straight line on a chart. It also analysed other sources of error, including the risk of parallax errors with some instruments; and faulty estimates of latitude and longitude on contemporary charts. In 1599–1600, Edward Wright's World Chart of 1599 was the first map under the Mercator projection drawn by an Englishman for English navigation. The map prominently displays the Queen Elizabeth I Privy Seal; the only one of her realm to carry her private seal. The Molyneux 1592 globe is the only other cartography with her Privy Seal. Both identify
Nova Albion, the land Captain Francis Drake claimed for his Queen during
his 1577–1580 circumnavigation, above the 40th parallel. In 1631,
Pierre Vernier described his newly invented
quadrant that was accurate to one minute of arc. In theory, this level of accuracy could give a line of position within a nautical mile of the navigator's actual position. In 1635,
Henry Gellibrand published an account of yearly change in
magnetic variation. In 1637, using a specially built
astronomical sextant with a 5-foot radius, Richard Norwood measured the length of a nautical mile with chains. His definition of 2,040 yards is fairly close to the modern
International System of Units (SI) definition of 2,025.372 yards. Norwood is also credited with the discovery of
magnetic dip 59 years earlier, in 1576. This group, which existed until 1828, offered grants and rewards for the solution of navigational problems.
Isaac Newton invented a reflecting quadrant around 1699. He wrote a detailed description of the instrument for
Edmond Halley, which was published in 1742. Due to this time lapse, credit for the invention has often been given instead to
John Hadley and
Thomas Godfrey. The octant eventually replaced earlier
cross-staffs and
Davis quadrants, In 1899 the
R.F. Matthews was the first ship to use wireless communication to request assistance at sea. The Stone Radio & Telegraph Company installed an early prototype
radio direction finder on the naval collier
Lebanon in 1906. 1921 saw the installation of the first radiobeacon. The first prototype shipborne radar system was installed on the USS
Leary in April 1937. On November 18, 1940, Mr. Alfred L. Loomis made the initial suggestion for an electronic air navigation system which was later developed into
LORAN (long range navigation system) by the Radiation Laboratory of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and on November 1, 1942, the first LORAN System was placed in operation with four stations between the
Chesapeake Capes and
Nova Scotia. Scientists at
Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory took a series of measurements of
Sputnik's
doppler shift yielding the satellite's position and velocity. This team continued to monitor
Sputnik and the next satellites into space,
Sputnik II and
Explorer I. In March 1958 the idea of working backwards, using known satellite orbits to determine an unknown position on the Earth's surface began to be explored. This led to the
TRANSIT satellite navigation system. The first
TRANSIT satellite was placed in polar orbit in 1960. The system, consisting of 7 satellites, was made operational in 1962. A navigator using readings from three satellites could expect accuracy of about 80 feet. On July 14, 1974 the first prototype Navstar GPS satellite was put into orbit, but its clocks failed shortly after launch. The
Navigational Technology Satellite 2, redesigned with cesium clocks, started to go into orbit on June 23, 1977. By 1985, the first 11-satellite GPS Block I constellation was in orbit. Satellites of the similar Russian
GLONASS system began to be put into orbit in 1982, and the system is expected to have a complete 24-satellite constellation in place by 2010. The
European Space Agency expects to have its
Galileo with 30 satellites in place by 2011–12 as well. ==Integrated bridge systems==