History: This Way Be Monsters

Back before sextants and telescopes, seamen had to do things the hard way. Naturally, that included sailing off to points unknown and exploring worlds that landsmen imagined were unchartable. The Vikings were surprisingly good at that sort of thing, sailing off to Asia and North America and everywhere in between. Besides incredible courage, seamen have always had a penchant for story telling. And it’s a sure bet that nothing was more fun that scaring the hell out of a lubber or two when you got home from a voyage to the edge of the world. Here, then, are a few of the stories which have come down to us from before the Great Age of Sail. These are imaginary locations and usually, along with their name, some slightly vague and terrifying description of the inhabitants or troubles one might encounter there are included. Antipodes: this was the land of dragons. One could also find such oddly named and nebulous beings as garamantes and troglodytes there. Brumae: these were large areas of open ocean where enormous patches of seaweed lurked. The weed was said to be able to founder a ship. These tales may have been inspired by the Sargasso Sea. Located in the middle of the North Atlantic, the area is often clogged with sargassum seaweed which can indeed disable ships. Frigor: these areas were supposed to be empty, frozen lands at the northernmost and southernmost tips of the world, an obvious reference to the Arctic and Antarctica. Mare Tenebrosum: here giant monsters resided. All the tall tales one could imagine – huge bats with human faces, gigantic octopi that could drag a ship to her doom and sea serpents of every description – resided in this unnamed, uncharted part of the sea. Torrid Zone: this was the equatorial area, where calms plague sailing ships and the air feels like a furnace belched it out. Sailors would add to this terror by telling of giant walls of flame shooting up out of the ocean and hindering their progress. This area was sometimes referred to as Perusta. Just a few thoughts on what lurks beyond the horizon, some more real than others. Header: Classic Kraken; tinted engraving via Wikimedia

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Time

Time is short, of the essence, and there is not a moment to lose. Or so it seems aboard ship. Stephen Maturin famously complained of this situation at sea in O’Brian’s books and in the movie Master and Commander. Jack Aubrey, for his part, could not comprehend what his doctor was whining about. To him, there truly was never a moment to be lost, and so it is with most sailors. There are other uses for time at sea, however, and even words that sound like it from foreign shores.


Time is, first and foremost, the way of keeping track of the day. All ships – from smuggler’s pirogue to pirate’s sloop to massive ship of the line – ran on bells, which mark her time. The bell was rung, or struck in common shipboard parlance, every half hour with the glass being turned at the same time. Thus eight bells signaled the end of a four hour watch.

The half-hour glass was the true time keeper and the margin for human error was great in keeping track of it, particularly under stress. To rectify any errors in time keeping, noon was read daily via a sextant. Thus solar time was set to rights each day. The call of noon was also the official beginning of the ship’s day when a new page in the log would be dated and begun. This ritual goes along with “taking time” when an assistant – usually a youth or Midshipman – would note the time via chronometer each time the officer observing with the sextant called “stop”. In this way, the astronomical observation is rectified as necessary for the most correct reading possible.

A chronometer and later the very accurate hand held watches, many famously originating from Switzerland, were known as timekeepers or time-pieces aboard ship. They were a source of concern for common sailors. Like the compass with its magnetic workings, time-pieces seemed somewhat magical and therefore must be given a wider berth.

Timenoguy is an ancient word for a stay that could prevent sheets or tacks from getting fouled in other rigging. These ropes were particularly used in the fore rigging.

A timoneer is a helmsman. The word came to English via the French timonier and could also indicate a pilot in some cases. Along the same lines is the word timonogy, which is described in The Sailor’s Word Book thusly:

This term properly belongs to steering, and is derived from timon, the tiller, and the twiddling-lines, which worked in olden times on a gauge in front of the poop, in ships of the line, by which the position of the helm was easily read even from the forecastle.

And with that, happy Saturday, Brethren. Keep your timeonguy and your twiddling-lines taut and, whenever possible, make time for yourself and those you love.

Header: Frigate Rose as HMS Surprise by Scott Kennedy

Tools of the Trade: Know Your Oc from Your Sex

When I was learning to drive in the greater Los Angeles area, we used Thomas Guides to find our way around. For those of you too young to remember albums, the TGs were cumbersome books full of maps that allowed one to navigate the highways and byways of their city simply by knowing the address of their destination and how to run their fingers down column "F" and across column "C" until they met. Voila! Somewhere in that square was the place you wanted to be. Try to find an apartment complex in Silverlake that way these days. Let me know how that turns out.

Now, of course, GPS is the way to go on land and at sea as well. But what did a seaman do prior to such inventions? He used the latest technology available, of course. Seamen aren't dumb.

We have already discussed the cross-staff, which required a navigator to look directly into the sun (ouch!) and the back-staff, which took the pain away but was not the most accurate of navigational tools. Things really took a leap ahead in 1731 when John Hadley invented the octant, an example of which is pictured above. The octant essentially stabilized the process of taking sightings by improving on the human eye and hand with the use of two mirrors. This allowed the navigator to view the sun without looking directly into it, and then to view the horizon without having to change the position of his eye or hand. It was a major breakthrough in sailing technology.

Always trying to improve on a good thing, the seafaring scientist of The Enlightenment continued to struggle over the problem of getting a ship to its exact destination. Perhaps even more important was the need to document and map all the new places that (European) men were traveling to and accurate sightings were a must for accurate mapping. The real issue was not latitude, which could be calculated by measuring the sun in relation to the horizon, but longitude, which kept shifting with the Earth's orbit.

In 1757 John Hadley did it again and introduced the sextant (the one shown having belonged to Captain James Cook, whose first voyage was one of the initial long term trials of the invention). This instrument worked on the same two mirror principle as the octant but, with the addition of a wider arc and a telescope, it allowed the navigator to take sightings between stars, planets, the moon and the sun rather than just between a heavenly body and the horizon. As long as a ship knew the exact time of day when a sighting was taken (thus the sailors' obsession with "turning the glass and striking the bell" even aboard pirates and privateers), accuracy could be assured within one tenth of a degree. The sextant, like the octant, was a highly sensitive instrument, particularly to vibrations. Inaccurate readings continued to occur but, in skilled hands and until modern technology took over, the sextant was the best device for determining a ship's position at sea.

GPS is fine and all, and so is accuracy, but sometimes a piece of history is nice to hold. I kinda miss my sturdy, well worn Thomas Guide. And a shiny, brass sextant.