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I said I would report back when my copy of "History of Marine Navigation",
by Per Collinder arrived.

So here's a first-impression, just based on an initial quick read.

It's a competent history, well translated into English, but not a deep one.
It's lacking in any maths and without detailed diagrams. Instead, it's
easy-reading, with plenty of stories (some fictional), traditions, and
broad-brush accounts of early voyages. All very well, if that's what you're
after, but wasn't really my cup-of-tea. I prefer something more penetrating.
There was a strong Scandinavian influence, which is fair enough.

Some of what Collinder writes should be taken with a pinch of salt. For
example, in the extract Frank quoted in [9078], Collinder referred to the
requirement for a timekeeper for the longititude prize as "an average error
of less than three seconds (of time) a day., adding - "There was no pendulum
clock on land capable of that.". That last bit's nonsense. There had been
many regulators, in observatories, with much better performance than that,
such as Tompions's great clocks at Greenwich, built 70 years earlier (which
still survive). The difficulty was to make a timepiece which would keep good
time at sea, with the motion of a ship.

However, I learned something quite new to me; the description (the first in
the West) of the marine compass by an English theologian Alexander Neckam in
1187. I hadn't even heard of Neckam before. That reference led me, via
Google, to the "Dictionary of Science Quotations", from which I gleaned the
following-from which I gleaned the following-

=======================
      Alexander Neckam
      (8 Sep 1157 - 1217)


      English educator and scientist , who learned of the mariner's compass
while in Paris, which the Chinese had been using for at least two centuries,
and described in a book, De utensilibus ("On Instruments").



      [more biography...]


Science Quotes by Alexander Neckam (2)


Nautae etiam mare legentes, cum beneficium claritatis solis in tempore
nubilo non sentiunt, aut etiam cum caligne nocturnarum tenebrarum mundus
obvolvitur, et ignorant in quem mundi cardinem prora tendat, acum super
mangentem ponunt, quae circulariter circumvolvitur usque dum, ejus motu
cessante.
Mariners at sea, when, through cloudy weather in the day which hides the
sun, or through the darkness of night, they lose knowlege of the quarter of
the world to which they are sailing, touch a needle with a magnet, which
will turn round till, on its motion ceasing, its point will be directed
towards the north.

- Alexander Neckam

De naturis rerum. Original Latin text quoted in Thomas Wright, A Volume of
Vocabularies... (1873), 114. Translation from Lloyd A Brown, The Story of
Maps (1980), 127.

See also:  |  Compass (4)  |  Magnetism (12)



Qui ergo munitam vult habere navem habet etiam acum jaculo suppositam.
Rotabitur enim et circumvolvetur acus, donec cuspis acus respiciat orientem
sicque comprehendunt quo tendere debeant nautaw cum Cynosura latet in aeris
turbatione; quamvis ad occasum numquam tendat, propter circuli brevitatem.
If then one wishes a ship well provided with all things, then one must have
also a needle mounted on a dart. The needle will be oscillated and turn
until the point of the needle directs itself to the East* [North], thus
making known to sailors the route which they should hold while the Little
Bear is concealed from them by the vicissitudes of the atmosphere; for it
never disappears under the horizon because of the smallness of the circle it
describes.

- Alexander Neckam

Latin text from Thomas Wright, 'De Utensilibus', A Volume of Vocabularies,
(1857) as cited with translation in Park Benjamin, The Intellectual Rise in
Electricity: A History (1895), 129.

=================

Apparently, Neckam had spent some time teaching in the University of Paris.
I suspect, however, that his knowlege of the compass was obtained directly
from the mariners with whom he crossed the English Channel, and far more
reliably than if it had come from the divines at the University of Paris.

George.

contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.


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