NAVEL (O. Eng. nafela, a word common to Teutonic languages; cf. Ger. Nabel, Swed. nafvel; the Sanskrit is nābhīla; the English root is also seen in “nave,” the hub of a wheel), in anatomy, the umbilicus (Gr. ὀμφαλός), the depression in the abdomen which indicates the point through which the embryo mammal obtained nourishment from its mother (see Anatomy: section Superficial and Artistic).
NAVIGATION (from Lat. navis, ship, and agere, to move), the
science or art of conducting a ship across the seas. The term
is also popularly used by analogy of boats on rivers, &c., and of
flying-machines or similar methods of locomotion. Navigation,
as an art applied properly to ships, is technically used in the
restricted sense dealt with below, and has therefore to be
distinguished from “seamanship” (q.v.), or the general
methods of rigging a ship (see Rigging), or the management
of sails, rudder, &c.
History.
The early history of the rise and progress of the art of navigation is very obscure, and it is more easy to trace the gradual advance of geographical knowledge by its means than the growth of the practical methods by which this advance was attained. Among Western nations before the introduction of the mariner’s compass the only practical means of navigating ships was to keep in sight of land, or occasionally, for short distances, to direct the ship’s course by referring it to the sun or stars; this very rough mode of procedure failed in cloudy weather, and even in short voyages in the Mediterranean in such circumstances the navigator generally became hopelessly bewildered as to his position.
Over the China Sea and Indian Ocean the steadiness in direction of the monsoons was very soon observed, and by running directly before the wind vessels in those localities were able to traverse long distances out of sight of land in opposite directions at different seasons of the year, aided in some cases by a rough compass (q.v.). But it is surprising when we read of the progress made among the ancients in fixing positions on shore by practical astronomy that so many years should have passed without its application to solving exactly the same problems at sea, but this is probably to be explained by the difficulty of devising instruments for use on the unsteady platform of a ship, coupled with the lack of scientific education among those who would have to use them.
The association of commercial activity and nautical progress shown by the Portuguese in the early part of the 15th century marked an epoch of distinct progress in the methods of practical navigation, and initiated that steady improvement which in the 20th century has raised the art of navigation almost to the position of an exact science. Up to the time of the Portuguese exploring expeditions, sent out by Prince Henry, generally known as the “Navigator,” which led to the discovery of the Azores in 1419, the rediscovery of the Cape Verde Islands in 1447 and of Sierra Leone in 1460, navigation had been conducted in the most rude, uncertain and dangerous manner it is possible to conceive. Many years had passed without the least improvement being introduced, except the application of the magnetic needle about the beginning of the 14th century (see Compass and Magnetism). Prince Henry did all in his power to bring together and systematize the knowledge then obtainable upon nautical affairs, and also established an observatory at Sagres (near Cape St Vincent) in order to obtain more accurate tables of the declination of the sun. John II., who ascended the throne of Portugal in 1481, followed up the good work. He employed Roderick and Joseph, his physicians, with Martin de Bohemia, from Fayal, to act as a committee on navigation. They calculated tables of the sun’s declination, and improved the astrolabe, recommending it as more convenient than the cross-staff. The Ordenanzas of the Spanish council of the Indies record the course of instruction prescribed at this time for pilots; it included the De Sphaera Mundi of Sacrobosco, the spherical triangles of Regiomontanus, the Almagest of Ptolemy, the use of the astrolabe and its mechanism, the adjustments of instruments, cartography and the methods of observing the movements of heavenly bodies.
The then backward state of navigation is best understood from a sketch of the few rude appliances which the mariner had, and even these were only intended for the purpose of ascertaining the latitude. The mystery of finding the longitude proved unfathomable for many years after the time of the Armada, and the very inaccurate knowledge existing of the positions of the heavenly bodies themselves fully justified the quaintly expressed advice given in a nautical work of repute at the time, where the writer observes, “Now there be some that are very inquisitive to have a way to get the longitude, but that is too tedious for seamen, since it requireth the deep knowledge of astronomy, wherefore I would not have any man think that the longitude is to be found at sea by any instrument; so let no seamen trouble themselves with any such rule, but (according to their accustomed manner) let them keep a perfect account and reckoning of the way of their ship.” Such record of the “way of the ship” appears to have been then and for many years later recorded in chalk on a wooden board (log board), which folded like a book, and from which each day a position for the ship was deduced, or from which the more careful made abstracts into what was termed the “journal.”
A compass, a cross-staff or astrolabe, a fairly good table of the sun’s declination, a correction for the altitude of the pole star, and occasionally a very incorrect chart formed all the appliances of a navigator in the time of Columbus, For a knowledge of the speed of the ship one of the earliest methods of actual measurement in use was by what was known as the “Dutchman’s log,” which consisted in throwing into the water, from the bows of the ship, something which would float, and noting the interval between its apparently drifting past two observers standing on the deck at a known distance apart. No other method is mentioned until 1577, when a line was attached to a small log of wood, which was thrown overboard, and the length measured which was carried over in a certain interval of time; this interval of time was, we read, generally obtained by the repetition of certain sentences, which were repeated twice if the ship were only moving slowly. It is unfortunate that the words of this ancient shibboleth are unknown. This is mentioned by Purchas as being in occasional use in 1607, but the more usual method (as we incidentally see in the voyages of Columbus) was to estimate or guess the rate of progress. It was customary by one or other of these methods to determine the speed of a ship every two hours, “royal” ships and those with very careful captains doing so every hour. When a vessel had been on various courses during the two hours, a record of the duration on each was usually kept by the helmsman on a traverse board, which consisted of a board having 32 radial lines drawn on it representing the points of the compass, with holes at various distances from the centre, into which pegs were inserted, the mean or average course being that entered on the log board.
Some idea of the speed of ordinary ships in those days may be gathered from an observation in 1551 of a “certain shipp which, without ever striking sail, arrived at Naples from Drepana, in Sicily, in 37 hours” (a distance of 200 m.); the writer accounting for “such swift motion, which to the common sort of man seemeth incredible,” by the fact of the occurrence of “violent floods and outrageous winds.” In 1578 we find in Bourne’s Inventions and Devices a description of a proposed patent log for recording a vessel’s speed, the idea (as far as we can gather from its vague description) being to register the revolutions of a wheel enclosed in a case towed astern of a ship (see Log).
Whether the property of the lodestone was independently discovered in Europe or introduced from the East, it does not appear to have been generally utilized in Europe earlier than about A.D. 1400 (see Compass). In Europe the card or “flie” appears to have been attached to the magnet from the first, and the whole suspended as now in gimbal-rings within the “bittacle,” or, as we now spell the word, “binnacle.” The direction of a ship’s head by compass was termed how she “capes.” From the accounts extant of the stores supplied to ships in 1588, they appear to have usually had two compasses, costing 3s. 4d. each, which were kept in charge by the boatswain. The fact that the north point of a compass does not, in most places, point to the true pole but eastward or westward of it, by an amount which is termed by sailors “variation,” appears to have been noticed at an early date; but that the amount of variation varied in different localities appears to have been first observed by either Columbus or Cabot about 1490, and we find it used to be the practice to ascertain this error when at sea either from a bearing of the pole star, or by taking a mean of the compass bearings of the sun at both rising and setting, the deviation of the compass in the ships of those days being too small a quantity to be generally noticed, though there is a very suggestive remark on the effect of moving the position of any iron placed near a compass, by a Captain Sturmy of Bristol in 1679. In order, partially to obviate the error of the compass (variation), the magnets, which usually consisted of two steel wires joined at both ends and opened out in the middle, were not placed under the north and south line of the compass card, but with the ends about a point eastward of north and westward of south, the variation in London when first observed in 1580 being about 11° E.; the change of the variation year by year at the same base was first noted by Gellibrand in 1635.
The “cross-staff” appears to have been used by astronomers at a
very early period, and, subsequently by seamen for measuring