Safeholdian navigation
Alex
may eventually find its way into Pearls of Weber. I haven't yet read
*By Heresies Distressed* (I'm currently re-reading OAR and BSRA), so
maybe the answer's in there somewhere, but as far as I can tell it's
never made clear in the first two books how Safeholdian sailors reckon
longitude, and how accurate their measurements are. Historically,
this was a huge problem; astronomical referents are reliable for
reckoning latitude, but useless for longitude unless one has a precise
method for keeping track of time. Pendulum-based clocks, of course,
cannot keep accurate time at sea because the movement of a ship in the
water disturbs the movement of the pendulum. The problem was finally
solved in the eighteenth century by John Harrison's invention of the
marine chronometer, as chronicled in the book *Longitude* by Dava
Sobel, and the excellent miniseries based on it.
Given that (as far as I recall) there's been no mention of marine
chronometers in the books, I surmise that they are not yet in use, and
may well fall under the Proscriptions of Jwo-jeng. Is this in fact
the case? And if so, was it one of the factors limiting blue-water
sailing up to the recent past? Given the maps in the Book of
Hastings, and the generally smaller size of Safehold's oceans compared
to Earth's, it should be somewhat less of a problem there than it was
here, but it must still make navigation out of sight of land a dicey
proposition.
Ehran
given the general lack of seaworthiness of their vessels and the fact they
tend to sail along coastlines this probably isn't the problem for them it was
for us.
Alex
>
> - Show quoted text -
That's true for vessels plying the coasts of Haven and Howard, but if
you want to get to or from Charis, Tarot, Emerald, Corisande,
Chisholm, and/or Trellheim, you're going to be crossing some pretty
big stretches of open water. Without a reliable measure of longitude,
the risk of running aground in the night on a shoal you thought you
were miles east or west of could get pretty substantial by the time
you're approaching your destination.
Quadibloc
> Given that (as far as I recall) there's been no mention of marine
> chronometers in the books, I surmise that they are not yet in use, and
> may well fall under the Proscriptions of Jwo-jeng. Is this in fact
> the case?
The Proscriptions haven't been disclosed explicitly, no doubt to give
David Weber some flexibility when he gets around to writing the book
in which Charis collides head-on with them.
But we do know that the Safeholders were given a Ptolemaic cosmology -
however, they were allowed to know that the world is round, not flat.
As a result, I suspect that a marine chronometer could well be an
improvement that does not fall afoul of the Proscriptions, since it's
merely a mechanical device... except that they may also restrict
astronomy, just as they are noted as restricting mathematics.
John Savard
Dahak
laser made Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> write:
>The Proscriptions haven't been disclosed explicitly, no doubt to give
>David Weber some flexibility when he gets around to writing the book
>in which Charis collides head-on with them.
>
>But we do know that the Safeholders were given a Ptolemaic cosmology -
>however, they were allowed to know that the world is round, not flat.
>As a result, I suspect that a marine chronometer could well be an
>improvement that does not fall afoul of the Proscriptions, since it's
>merely a mechanical device... except that they may also restrict
>astronomy, just as they are noted as restricting mathematics.
Safehold already has mechanical clocks, so the development of a
reliable marine chronometer shouldn't be any kind of violation.
-JPB
Quadibloc
wrote:
> Safehold already has mechanical clocks, so the development of a
> reliable marine chronometer shouldn't be any kind of violation.
And, I also see that in one of the books, it's specifically noted that
unlike the navies of some other realms, the Charis navy has no need to
hug the coastline and can venture out onto the blue water.
However, while people use spyglasses in the books, no one is mentioned
as even using a sextant to determine latitude, let alone a chronometer
to determine longitude. So it appears that they're navigating largely
by dead reckoning - although even the constellations would let them
determine latitude.
John Savard
Dahak
laser made Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> write:
>However, while people use spyglasses in the books, no one is mentioned
>as even using a sextant to determine latitude, let alone a chronometer
>to determine longitude. So it appears that they're navigating largely
>by dead reckoning - although even the constellations would let them
>determine latitude.
David has mentioned that the Charisians pretty much resort to
compass-based dead reckoning.
In the early part of:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Safehold/231/1
-JPB