The elegant Japan, which belonged to APL’s predecessor, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Click on image to see a larger version.

If you’ve ever stood on an ocean beach with nothing but water and waves for as far as you could see, you can imagine how frightening the oceans must have seemed to people long ago. They didn’t know what was on the other side of the ocean, or even if there was another side — maybe if they sailed too far, they’d just fall off the edge of the earth. And even if they sailed out and found new lands, they didn’t know how they’d ever find their way back home again.

So it probably doesn’t surprise you to learn that long ago when people traveled by sea they found their way using “coastal navigation.” This is a fancy way of saying that they “navigated” or found their direction simply by following the coastline. In the early days of ocean travel, people rarely traveled more than a day away from land. They wanted to be able to see where they were and know they could get back home.

Soon, though, sailors learned that they could use the sun and the stars to guide them as they traveled. Using “celestial navigation,” sailors tracked the position of the sun and the “Pole” or “North Star” to determine their direction. A rising sun on the left-hand side of the ship, for instance, meant the ship was sailing south. And the Pole Star, which was visible everywhere north of the equator, stayed in a fixed position all night, allowing sailors to follow it. Sailors quickly developed tools to help them use the stars more precisely. The quadrant and astrolabe were two tools that helped sailors determine their “latitude” or the distance from north to south. Can you learn more about these tools using an encyclopedia or the library?

Click on photo to see the full image.

Somewhere around the 12th century, ocean navigation took another leap forward with the development of the compass. The compass used the Earth’s magnetic field and its strong North Pole to help sailors find their way. By the 1300’s, the “compass rose” was often printed on maps and charts to help sailors chart their course. The compass rose was drawn as a circle with 32 points around it — making it look like a rose. The points showed the major winds on which a sailing ship could ride.

Until the 1800s, sailors had to rely on the wind to power their sailing ships when they traveled across the ocean. So it makes sense that the compass rose was based on the directions of the major winds. Early sailors had used nature — the sun and the stars — to help them find their way. And through the 1800s, sailors continued to use nature — the winds and currents — to take them where they wanted to go.

Many sailors, especially those traveling from Europe to America, used the “Trade Winds” to help them travel. The Trade Winds are regular, dependable winds that blow east to west at the 20 degree latitude. Sailors from Portugal, for instance, would ride the Trade Winds across the ocean to the Canary Islands. Then, they would rely on the “westerlies,” the companions to the Trade Winds, to help them journey back to the southern coast of Africa and then back home to Lisbon.

Today, travel at sea is very different from the old days of sailing ships and navigation by the stars. Today, captains of huge container ships chart their course using satellites and computers. And they follow trade lanes, which have been mapped out across the oceans almost like traffic lanes on a street, to keep ships from colliding with each other.

The APL Korea in Yantian

Ocean travel has become much more common. But it’s still very exciting. To learn more, please choose a type of navigation — such as coastal navigation or celestial navigation or navigation by compass — and use the encyclopedia, library, and internet to learn more about it. Write a 2-page paper summarizing what you learned: when was this type of navigation first developed? How was it used? Who used it?

Or, if you are interested in the Trade Winds and want to learn more about ocean trade, use the library, encyclopedia, and Internet to see what you can learn about early ocean exploration and trade. Which countries were known for sending out ocean explorers? Which countries did those explorers visit? What kinds of goods were traded between countries?

A few good links:

There is a good image and essay about the compass rose at: www.ctmap.com/gisnet/notebook/comprose.html

The commerce and navigation part of the Year of the Ocean site (from 1998) is at www.enn.com/yoto/industry/commerce

Over the last two years, as the Boomerang Box has been traveling from port to port across oceans and seas, we have explored several topics related to ships and oceans:

• You can learn more about how ships float and even do your own experiments.
• You can follow the history of cargo ships from ancient times to the present.
• You can learn how a ship at sea communicates with the rest of the world.
• And you can learn what the U.S. Coast Guard does.