mch

CHAPTER 6
The Kings of
the Sea
UNTIL A FEW YEARS ago the general belief was that it was impossible
to navigate oceans without compass, sextant, chronometer,
or sighting land. The question how our ancestors then managed
to reach distant lands across open seas was unanswered. We
know primitive compasses and sextants existed, but there were
no chronometers deemed necessary to determine the longitude.
The first such transportable clock movement was fabricated in
France around 1525, but the first ship chronometer dates back
only to 1736 when, after eight years of tedious work, John Harrison
of England completed his masterpiece.
The official scientific answer to the riddle of how men could
navigate was simple. We were told our forefathers never let land
out of sight and navigated along the coasts only. This we were
taught in school and this we were supposed to believe even
though it was only one of the many blunders that our learned
academicians were guilty of. Another fallacy in the same category
was the tale that the American continent was populated by
migrants who came from Asia over the frozen Bering Strait, even
though archaeological and ethnological discoveries
demonstrate
conclusively that men did know how to navigate tens of thousands
of years ago and had no need to wait from one ice age to
the next to make the crossing to Alaska. In fact, they didn t hesitate
to cross the ocean on rafts or on ships.