Celestial Navigation and the Evolution of the Sextant
These days, anyone can hop on a boat and have an adventure, or go exploring. If something
goes wrong, they can call for help. The majority of professional navigators today use Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), Loran, radar, finely calibrated marine compasses, and continuously updated nautical charts, and of course calculators, along with myriad other skills integral to piloting a vessel in the world oceans. They are also in almost constant communication with others around the world. Prior to electronic navigation and communication, if a sailor didn’t know how to navigate, and chart a course by the stars, it was quite literally, sink or swim (Chapman, 1969; Heyerdahl, 1978), and as Tania Aebi disclosed in her autobiographical story, Maiden Voyage, the preparation for and knowledge of navigation and plotting star courses is still invaluable for those unforeseen instances when the electronics fail (Aebi & Brennan, 1989). Up until the invention of these electronic tools which could do the work for them, navigators relied upon celestial navigation along with some combination of skills and techniques, which often evolved independently of each other in different eras and civilizations (Chapman, 1969; Ifland, 2003; Macleod, 2010). They included an understanding of weather patterns, currents, signs that showed land was close, measuring depths of waters and more (Chapman, 1969).