Seamarks

Like mountains, islands aided in keeping a ship on course, and literary evidence from Homer forward portrays navigators steering by keeping specific islands to port or starboard. Islands, of course, possess features both of landmarks and seamarks; all the landmarks enumerated above could be found on islands. Yet a long maritime tradition beginning with Homer characterizes islands as objects protruding from the sea that often possess a capacity for motion or floating not attributed to continental land masses.

On the open sea, wave patterns, driven by sea currents and winds, indicated general direction as well as developing weather conditions. While land was still out of sight, observations of fish could distinguish deep-sea from shallow-water species, and sightings of seabirds might permit an estimate of their typical ranges from land. Upon reaching inshore waters, to avoid danger crews had only a sounding lead or pole as an instrument to augment the information they could collect visually and their prior knowledge of local bathymetry and topography. Visual indicators of submarine features included breaking and deflected waves, protruding rocks and shoals, and water color and odor. Waves breaking far from shore indicated a shallow approach and the need for caution to avoid running aground on a shelf or invisible rocks. Changes in water color, typically from deeper to lighter shades of blue, indicated movement into shallower waters, as did the odor of waters permeated with coastal sea plants and animals, and often commingled with fresh water from estuaries, river mouths, and springs.

Human constructions on the sea, including breakwaters, jetties, and mooring posts, were recognizable infrastructural elements of harbors in ancient times. Yet it remains to be demonstrated that Mycenaeans built any of these, in contrast to the built features of contemporary Egyptian or Mesopotamian river harbors, or even the near-shore ship sheds that the Minoans built at Kommos and other sites (Shaw 1985; Shaw and Shaw 1999; see Chapter 5). Nor is there any indication that buoys or other channel markers were used in the Bronze Age.