During the 15th century Portuguese captains navigating the African coast and the oceans beyond were faced with the problem of sailing without the North Star. This star was the point of reference for determining latitude in northern waters. In the school founded by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), geographers and astronomers worked on revising tables for the declination of the Sun, which moved to a different position relative to the horizon each day. Improved
Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe
Knowledge of the ecliptic (the Earth’s solar orbit) gave navigators a better tool for sailing with confidence below the equator, and far out into the ocean. Although relatively few documents of the early Portuguese and Spanish voyages remain, the few that survive, especially the logbooks, record the procedures of navigating in the open ocean. One of the most famous is the daily logbook of da Gama’s first voyage, compiled by a member of the expedition. By far the most valued navigational document of the Renaissance was (and is) the journal kept by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) during the first voyage, which survived in a reliable 16th-century copy. Greatly abridged, the journal was published in 1493 in four cities, introducing European readers to Columbus’s momentous “discovery.”
By the late 15th century, commercial ships were outfitted with large square sails, necessary for moving heavy cargo through rough seas. It was impossible to sail such ships close to the wind to change directions easily. The smaller caravels used for many of the voyages of exploration had lateen (triangular) primary sails that could be augmented by one or more square sails. The Renaissance innovation of combining triangular and square sails resulted in the construction of ships that could respond with more flexibility to the unpredictable conditions of ocean travel. With lateen sails navigators could slowly move within 10 degrees of the wind, or tack against it in a zigzag course. Although manipulating lateen sails was rather time-consuming, the ultimate gain in speed surpassed the capabilities of square-rigged ships. Once the wind direction was set with the lateen sails, a ship with both types of sails could hoist the square-rigged sails and quickly follow its course.
From the latter 16th century, several reports from English navigators were published by Richard Hakluyt (c. 1552-1616). Among other topics, these document the particular hazards of sailing into northern waters. The expedition of Martin Frobisher (1535-94), for example, experienced an ice storm in 1576 in their attempt to locate a Northwest Passage to the Orient. Great slabs of sharp ice were pushed against the ships, threatening to crash through timber three inches thick: “(The sailors) strengthened the sides of their ships with junks of cable, beds, masts, planks, and such like, which being hanged overboard. . . might better defend them from the outrageous sway and strokes of the said ice. . . . For some, even without board upon the ice, and some within board upon the sides of their ships, having poles, pikes, pieces of timber, and oars in their hands, stood almost day and night without any rest, bearing off the force, and breaking the sway of the ice with such incredible pain and peril, that it was wonderful to behold” (Scott 1976, p. 248). Such accounts, eagerly read by the public, heroicized explorers and encouraged young adventure seekers to join future expeditions.
World History
