WEBVTT - Ancient Pacific Navigation, Part 2 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.320 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.960 My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:17.960 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:20.880 we're back with part two. In the last episode, we 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:25.400 talked about the settlement, the original colonization of the Pacific Islands, 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:29.560 and today we're back to talk about some documentation of 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:35.440 the amazing navigation techniques used by the master navigators of 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:39.440 various Pacific islands. Uh. And I'm really excited to talk 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.200 about this stuff today because I've been reading this big, 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.920 very important book on the subject that was published in 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:48.880 nineteen seventy two by an author named David Lewis called 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:54.600 We the Navigators that involves extensive interviews with and then 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:58.600 direct sailing in firsthand observation of the navigation techniques of 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:01.840 master navigators from the Pacific Islands, for example, a man 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:05.480 named Tevak of the Santa Cruz Reef Islands and a 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:08.959 man named hip Or of Poula Wat in the Carolines. 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:11.280 And today we're gonna be talking about some of these 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.680 specific navigation techniques. Yeah. And again these are the techniques 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:21.479 of environmental navigation, so navigation at sea on the open sea, 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.640 conducted without instruments. Uh and and so I mean that's 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:28.120 ultimately the really amazing part of this. But then at 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:30.119 the same same time, I want to stress something we've 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:32.440 mentioned in the first episode that this is also not 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.280 based in sort of a gut instinct, a kind of 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:37.080 well I've been at sea enough, I kind of know 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:39.920 what I'm doing. No, this is a this is a science. 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:42.760 This is this is these are techniques that would have 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.679 that were passed down from generation to generation, from skilled 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:51.240 individual to two skilled individual. And uh. And so you know, 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.840 we see this continued on in oral traditions, but then 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:59.760 also we've seen them recorded, especially in the last few decades. 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.840 Uh that there's been a resurgence of interest in this 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.120 uh an effort to to make sure that these traditions 0:02:07.120 --> 0:02:11.040 and techniques survived and then also to use them to 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:16.480 understand the history of the colonization of these islands by 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.639 ancient humans. Right. And one of the points that Lewis 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.040 argues in his book is that the colonization of the 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:28.040 islands of the Pacific was not driven entirely by random drifts, say, 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:30.600 people getting blown off course by a storm or getting 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:35.160 lost and then happening upon a new island. That that instead, 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:37.799 he argues that a lot of these islands were probably 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:42.720 discovered by deliberate exploratory probes. Right, so let's get into 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.480 some of the techniques. Then. We're going to start with 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:49.280 what may seem the most obvious, and that is the stars. 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:51.720 There are a lot of amazing techniques to talk about, 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:54.799 but this is by far the most important one. Yes, 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.639 so Pacific islanders. Uh, specifically the trained navigators, they did 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.240 use the stars. The train navigator knew the positions of 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:06.840 important stars and their relationship to islands by heart. They 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.160 knew how the pattern of the stars changed depending on 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:13.120 where you went and what time of the year it was. 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.799 And they could also use the stars to determine latitude, 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:20.760 so it's your north south positioning. They could roughly determine 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:24.120 where they were in relation to the equator based on 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:28.040 the height of Polaris or the southern cross above the horizon, 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.880 which they would measure, again not using instruments, but using 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.160 the human hand. Yes, or sometimes I think also maybe uh, 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.920 parts of the boat could be used to sort of 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.520 orient with the stars on the horizon. Right, So, if 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:46.400 you're unfamiliar with this, kind of technique. As obviously most 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:50.120 of us are as I am, the mind is immediately boggled, right, 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:52.880 you think, Okay, how would I use the stars to 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:56.480 find I don't know a city or something like that. Uh, 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.160 you don't. You wouldn't even know where to start. But 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.480 once you know to look for, this actually becomes an 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:07.080 extremely reliable method. Uh. And specifically, the really important guide 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:11.080 stars here are constellations that are low in the sky 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.960 around the point where they are either rising or setting, 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.919 and can be easily associated with a particular heading toward 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.080 the horizon. So you're steering your boat and you're observing 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.880 the stars right around the horizon. So these would be 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:29.800 either stars and star constellations that have recently risen or 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.200 are about to set, depending on which direction east west 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.919 you're heading. So if you have a particular destination in 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:41.839 mind and you know you're starting position, you can associate 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:46.159 your destination with a particular guide star. Or what a 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.360 guide star would actually mean is a series of stars 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:53.800 and star constellations that will move move vertically up and 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.760 down across the sky as the night goes on. But 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.520 they might be identified by say the first star. You 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:02.520 would see the sequences as the guide star, and then 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:04.839 the train of subsequent stars that would move up and 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.880 down as the night goes on. But that is associated 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.720 with a particular island. Now, of course, it gets much 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.520 more complicated than that, because, for one thing, you have 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:19.320 to take into account position and geography, because while a 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.279 star can help give you a heading toward a known 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:27.560 island that's associated with it would only necessarily be associated 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.200 with the island you're heading for from a particular direction. Right, 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.480 So if you're heading from east to west, the island 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.000 you're looking for is under a certain star, but if 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.400 you're heading from north to the same island, that island 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.880 would be under a different star. Right. So the stars 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.320 help you get an orientation, but you have to know 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.040 the relationships between a sort of mental map of islands 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:54.320 in your head and how shifting the starting point of 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.400 the journey will shift what star path will lead you 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.960 to your island destination. But it gets even more complicated 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.159 than that because, of course, as we mentioned, the stars 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:07.280 don't stay still throughout the night. The earth is rotating, 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:10.960 so the fixed stars rise and set across the sky 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:13.800 over the course of a night, and as the stars 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.200 rise higher or set below the horizon, they become less 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.400 useful or not useful at all for navigating without equipment 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:23.280 and charts, not just because say, they're higher as they're 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:25.960 rising up, but also because they tend to rise at 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:29.360 an angle, so they won't stay right where they're supposed 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.000 to be on the horizon. What you want is a 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.760 reference star that is either just rising if you're heading east, 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.920 or is just about to set if you're heading west. Um, 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.200 So what do you do there? Well, what you would 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.120 tend to do is cycle through new sets of rising 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.919 or falling guide stars that you know will keep you 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.520 pointed in the right direction. And Lewis writes about this 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:54.440 that on average, you won't need more than about ten 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:57.680 guide stars to sail through an entire night, given the 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:00.680 amount of time that each star is usually pretty close 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:03.200 to the horizon, close enough to be usable. So you 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.320 can almost imagine kind of a I don't know, like 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:07.720 those like stock ticker strips, you know, the old one 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:10.560 is like a strip of stars that are peeling up 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:13.720 over the horizon all night long, and each one, you know, 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:15.880 is the next one in the set that is still 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:19.600 oriented with the top star in that strip that will 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:21.360 keep you going in the direction you need to go, 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.680 But stop and think about, like how much memorization this requires, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.760 Like how much you need to know about what the 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.760 stars look like, what their orientations are, and their relationships 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.000 to the islands you need to get to, depending on 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.280 where you're starting point. Is So the amount of navigational 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.120 lore that needs to be committed to memory and the 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:45.080 amount of detail in it is is absolutely astounding. I mean, 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:47.240 it reminds me a little. These are not directly comparable 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:48.840 at all, but it reminds me a little of how 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:52.040 in or is it Mark Twain's life on the Mississippi 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:55.760 talking about how an experienced riverboat pilot would need to 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.720 know by heart the entire river, like all the various 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.040 details of its it's twist and bends, its depth, et cetera, 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.160 and everything that went into knowing it. Which, um, yeah, 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:08.880 from what I've read, you can you can basically take 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:11.920 that and apply it to to any kind of nautical setting, 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:14.720 and certainly this one is well. Like you would need 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.920 to to know by heart the environment through which you 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:22.480 would be uh sailing, the environment of the waters, but 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.360 also the environment of the stars above. Yeah, And it 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:29.440 seems that while I don't know, while the mental memorization 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:33.080 of physical surroundings on land, including like trees and changes 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.720 in terrain and rocks and landmarks and stuff like that. 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:38.400 It maybe this is just my land lubb or bias, 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.640 but it seems like that kind of thing probably comes 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.000 more intuitively. It's more just sort of like a biological 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:48.760 default to recognize landmarks like plants and rocks and stuff 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:52.760 like that. Then it would be to memorize the stars 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.679 as your landmarks for guidance. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:01.400 I mean, it almost feels like sailing through the space. Uh. 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:03.320 Though of course there's going to be plenty concerning the 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.840 water itself and the and uh and other environmental cues 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:08.800 that will get to But but certainly at this point 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:11.280 in the in the podcast, it's easy to to almost 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.160 think of these as space voyages because of the degree 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:19.280 of focus that must be placed on the stars, right, 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.200 and so experienced specific navigators can use these rising and 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:27.120 setting guide stars to form this extremely accurate mental compass. 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.560 Lewis gives one example of one of his voyages with 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:35.000 the navigator TVAK, and he says, quote, by these obliquely 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.679 sinking stars, he was able to inform me that during 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.520 the evening that the wind had backed from southeast to 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:45.960 south southeast. I seriously doubted the accuracy of his observation 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.640 until Canopus, topping the horizon on a bearing of a 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:52.840 hundred and forty three degrees exactly in line with our stern, 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.000 confirmed that we were in fact dead on course and 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:59.840 that the wind had changed. Now, there's another variation on 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.240 idea of guide stars for navigation that is known as 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:07.880 the sidereal compass. That is basically like a a view 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.920 of the night sky that identifies particular rising or setting 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.920 stars with points on an imagined compass. Again, this is 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.040 not a piece of equipment, an external tool. This is 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:21.800 a compass in the brain that has a picture a 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.480 mental map of the stars and how the stars along 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:29.440 the horizon will give you information about north, southeast, and west. Now, 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.600 these are the basic primary methods of navigation by stars, 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:36.079 but obviously in practice it's a lot more complicated, So 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:38.880 a few examples. Of course, there is a lot of 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:43.679 adjusting the course to compensate for variations and currents and winds, 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:48.040 and to be adaptable for for celestial orientation markers. When 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:50.800 part of the sky is obscured, for example by clouds, 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.040 and I'll mention more about that in a minute. There's 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.720 another thing that's a complication with the use of guide 0:10:55.720 --> 0:11:01.000 stars for navigation, which is the seasonality of guide stars. Uh. Now, 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:05.559 of course, the availability of guide stars varies with the seasons, 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:10.000 because the sidereal day is actually twenty three hours and 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:14.080 fifty six minutes long, not twenty four hours. So each 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:18.760 star rises and sets four minutes earlier each night. And 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.240 as you can imagine, as this builds up over time, 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:25.319 you're actually going to be having different star maps available 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.040 to you as the year goes on. So in illustrating this, 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.800 Lewis writes that quote Tevak told me that the sailing 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.360 season in the Santa Cruz group lasted all year round, 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:39.600 and that there were appropriate steering stars for each time 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:44.040 of year. Similarly, when two two indicated the stars for 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:48.440 the Nomuka Tonga Tapoo passage, he stressed that the ones 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:51.800 he was showing me were usable only up to about September, 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:56.000 after which new stars and sailing directions had to be used. 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:58.640 So not only do you have to understand this whole 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:02.160 star map and its relations and ship to the island geography, 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.439 but also if you if you're sailing across different seasons, 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:08.400 you have to have the seasonal backups in mind as well. 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.600 Then there's even more to to take into account. One thing, 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:15.800 for example, is wind and leeway, So experience navigators will 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:19.360 have a mental map to reach their destination that must 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:23.520 include compensation for leeway. You know, the sideward drift of 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.040 a boat as it is is blown sort of off 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:29.680 course by wind. So if the navigator knows that the 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:33.400 destination is under a particular star, but there is a 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:37.080 known and relatively dependable amount of southerly drift on the 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.120 journey due to prevailing winds and currents, they actually have 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:43.680 to aim a certain amount north of the guide star. 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.439 That makes sense, Yeah, and that's just for permanent drifts. 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.679 There's also sort of more ad hoc compensation that has 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:52.920 to take place along the way as well. But one 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:55.640 of the big things that that really struck me about 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:59.160 this was how how much it inverts the logic of 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:03.440 nighttime now vigation versus daytime navigation. You know, uh, well, like, 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:05.640 how how would you think, what do you think would 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.079 be the best time to try to get somewhere. Obviously 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:09.880 you would probably think it's in the day, right when 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.320 you can see where you need to go. But it 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.520 is much easier to use the highly dependable celestial navigation 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:21.080 techniques of of the Pacific Islander navigation lore at night 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:23.720 than it is in the daytime. There there's still tools 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:25.520 they use in the daytime, and I'll talk about those 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:28.280 in a minute. Um. But even when the stars are 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:32.640 largely obscured by clouds, an experience navigator can usually use 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:36.560 some stars in the sky to orient and to get 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.920 onto the correct bearing, for example, by noting which stars 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:43.640 might lie it's a nine d degrees to the course, etcetera. Yeah, 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:45.800 I mean it almost sounds like you would you would 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:50.360 probably want to leave the shore, you know, around dusk, 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:55.240 um and uh, and then once and then hopefully you're 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:57.440 you're out to see by the time the stars have 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.679 come out. Right. Well, there's actually there's a good bit 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:03.720 of thought about when are the best times to arrive 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.200 and depart. So they talked about, Yeah, I think it's 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.280 usually customary to leave during the daytime. And one of 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.000 the main reasons it's important to leave during the daytime 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.080 is uh, not only that people can be notified and 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:18.719 you can say prepare things to take along with you. 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.440 That same day like fresh food, and you can say 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:25.080 your farewells to people during the daytime, but you can 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.360 also look back at the island you're leaving from to 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:31.840 get back bearings, right, So you can make use of 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:34.840 of the land for your navigation for as long as 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:38.840 it's feasible. Right. And it's also usually considered important to 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:42.520 arrive at your destination during the daytime because one of 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:48.520 the great perils actually of Pacific navigation is accidentally missing 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:52.200 your target in the dark. If you sail past the 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:54.680 island in the dark and you don't realize you've done it, 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.360 that can be uh that that could be a death sentence. 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:00.040 So it's kind of interesting while you're out on the 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:03.120 open ocean, navigating at night is ideal. That's you know, 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:07.160 where you get these accurate guide stars. But I think 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:09.960 it's often considered good to leave the island during the 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.240 daytime and to arrive at your destination during the daytime 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.080 and sometimes uh and there might be some exceptions to that, 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.760 but those seemed to be some general principles that were 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.600 observed at least that Lewis mentioned and uh and so 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:25.640 that would require very careful timing of the journey, right, 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:27.760 Like you need to know pretty much exactly how long 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.200 it's going to take, how many days, so that you 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.480 can time it out like that. And just as one 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:36.280 example about the dangers of missing an island at night, 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.640 uh Lewis talks about at least one of the navigators 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.680 he worked with having a practice of when you're getting 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:46.040 close to the island and it's really dark out, sometimes 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.800 they would just stop sailing. They would slow down. They 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:51.640 would uh it's called heaving to, you know, they would 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.320 heave to to slow the progress of the boat, just 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:57.520 to be super careful that they didn't accidentally, say, sail 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:00.360 between two islands unnoticed in the middle of the night. 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:04.720 But while the nighttime star navigation is the most accurate 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:07.240 thing to use, there are clues you can use for 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.320 navigation in the daytime as well. For example, you can 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:12.840 use the sun. It's more difficult to use the sun, 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:16.080 but it can be done. Uh. And it's more difficult 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:18.040 for a number of reasons. First of all, there's only 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:21.040 one of it, and its position can vary a lot 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:25.120 over the seasons. Right. Unlike the stars, the relative position 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.480 of the Sun on the horizon of Earth has a 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.600 lot more variability. But even with the seasonal variability of 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:33.240 the sun's position, you can still use it to navigate 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:37.880 by pairing it with external reference to the stars. And 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:40.480 this was one of the many moments in this book. 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.320 It gave me that like, oh, of course kind of feeling, 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.040 and this was one of them. So uh So, Lewis 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:48.800 writes at one point about another scholar who had been 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:52.480 writing about Pacific navigation uh named Aker Blom. He says, 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.600 quote Aker Blom surprisingly asserts that to achieve a satisfactory 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.120 degree of accuracy when checking the course by means of 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.320 the bearing of the rising or setting sun, the Polynesian 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:06.080 navigator must necessarily have had access to some form of 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:09.480 memorized table of the changes in the sun's asimuth. So 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:12.240 it's you know, changes in rising and setting patterns over 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:16.000 the seasons. But contrary to that, Lewis says, all the 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:18.879 navigator actually needs, of course, are his eyes and a 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:22.520 knowledge of the stars. The sun star comparison could be 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:25.080 made twice in each day if one were so minded. 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:27.160 So when the sun is rising or setting, you can 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:31.480 check its orientation with respect to the stars that appear, 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:33.760 you know, before or after it, and then you can 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.560 basically know where on the horizon it is rising or 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:45.960 setting at this time of year. Wow. Yeah, thank Now 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.560 there are other methods of maintaining course setting during the 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.800 daytime that are again more difficult than the nighttime, but 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:54.520 still possible. And another method that I thought was really 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:59.959 interesting was steering by ocean swells. And they're actually two 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.840 different uses here. Um, So there's one thing, which is 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.360 navigation by swells in the open water. So if you're 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.719 out you know, no side of land anywhere nearby, you 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:13.360 can use ocean swells to help you do direction finding, 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:15.879 just like you would use the sun or the stars. 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:18.600 But in addition to that, using the swells is actually 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.879 a land finding technique. It changes in how the ocean 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:24.920 swells are affected by nearby land masses can be used 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.320 to locate islands that are nearby, and this is something 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:30.560 we'll probably talk about more in the next part of 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.639 this of this series. But what does it mean to 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:38.200 steer by swells in the daytime? Well, swells are permanent 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:42.960 wave patterns with specific cardinal origin points, which are associated 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:46.439 not with waves kicked up by transient weather, but with 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:52.080 strong and persistent wind patterns associated with specific permanent weather systems. 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:56.200 For example, the trade winds or what or what a 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.560 Louis calls the southern Ocean belt of strong westerly's. Yeah, 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:04.000 and I think we can sort of loosely imagine like 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.439 a recreation of a basic form of this, you know, 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:09.840 in some sort of a model or simulation, if you 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:12.080 had a body of water and you had to say 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.840 a fan or something creating some sort of you know, 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:19.560 of disturbance across the surface, and it it was regular, 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:22.040 what would happen if you then dropped some islands in there? 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:25.879 It could disrupt the waves, especially in if we were 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:28.359 talking in in the actual ocean, in the form of 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:33.840 long ocean waves as they bend around land masses. And 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:36.880 and this wave disruption can be identified by a skilled eye, 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:40.879 enabling them to detect land hundreds of kilometers wave, and 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.560 which is is pretty amazing, right, And so that's the 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.720 kind that would be used specifically for the land finding, right. 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.879 But you can also use the ce swells like you 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:53.280 would use the stars to get directional orientation to know 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:56.440 which direction is north, southeast or west without a compass, 0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:00.919 Because if you know basically what direction c swell that 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:05.199 is permanent and reliable comes from, you can detect that 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:10.200 swell and then no, okay, that way is south southeast. Right. 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.560 So so now we have not only the stars above, 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:17.440 but also uh, the wave patterns the c swells as well. Right, 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.760 So these permanent weather patterns, they originate in a fairly 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:24.840 consistent direction from your location. Now, part of the ignorant 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:27.679 land dweller in me is just incredulous here, right, Like 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:29.720 when I'm out in a boat on the ocean, waves 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:32.720 seem utterly random to me. I could not I could 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:35.920 not identify that waves are coming from a particular direction. 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:38.560 And you know, but they're not well, unless it's coming 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:41.080 from a ski do right, then you are motor boat 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.920 that's coming by then it's pretty clear what's creating the distraction. 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:46.720 That's a good point. But you know, just the general 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:49.880 choppy wave patterns of the ocean, I wouldn't have any 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.199 idea what to do. But if you are trained in 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:56.520 knowing what to look for, you actually can identify particular 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:01.120 wave patterns or swell patterns. Lou actually makes a distinction 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:04.600 between waves and swells. Um. But but they're not just random. 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.960 The system of orientation based on swells is not as 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.760 reliable as the stars, but it's still pretty reliable, so 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.960 the question would be, well, how do you detect them? 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.360 One interesting fact is that the navigators Lewis learned from 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:23.199 seemed to consult the swells based on feeling them in 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:27.480 the body more so than looking at them, which means 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.879 that they can be used to steer not only in 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.720 the daytime, but on overcast nights. So when the stars 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:37.520 are completely hidden, that's your main orientation tool gone and 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:41.240 there's no light to see, you could still potentially feel 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:46.600 the directional swells and get an orientation based on that. Wow. 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.320 If that's interesting and it makes perfect sense. So how 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:52.200 do you feel swells? Well, there's a part in Lewis's 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:54.800 book where he talks about this. He says, quote Tek 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:57.600 told me he would sometimes retire to the hut on 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:01.080 his canoes out rigger platform, where you could lie down 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:04.840 and without distraction, more readily direct the helmsman onto the 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.600 proper course by analyzing the roll and pitch of the 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:13.640 vessel as it cork screwed over the waves. In distinguishing swells, 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:16.920 he stressed, you have to wait patiently until the one 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.720 you want has a spell of being prominent and discernible. 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:22.959 So there is a lot of noise in the waves, right, 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:25.720 So there's a lot of conflicting, you know, wave wave 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:29.880 action coming in different directions, but there's a certain pattern 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:34.200 you can recognize from a known swell, And once there's 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:36.440 a there's the right kind of timing in the wave 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:39.200 action for you to identify the pattern of that known 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:42.959 directional swell. You can orient based on that. And this 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:45.520 would be again done by feeling it in the body 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:49.280 and feeling the direction of the rolling of the boat. 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:51.720 So when you think about how a boat moves in 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.920