Finding Your Way:

Navigation at Sea
By Nancy Hughes, Mystic Seaport Educator

To learn how Mystic Seaport’s educational programs meet the

Common Core standards and the CT Social Studies Frameworks,
please see https://www.mysticseaport.org/learn/k-12-programs/common-core/
For more information on navigation, or to book a tour, please visit our website:
http://www.mysticseaport.org/learn/k-12-programs/field-trip/

N
avigation at sea is a complicated business. Imagine what it must have been like to travel the world aboard a ship long ago, when sailors did not have our modern technology.
How did they do it? Mystic Seaport is a great place to explore their methods and tools and to understand how these connect to what we use today. New this year, the Education
Department at Mystic Seaport offers two special tours focusing on navigation. “Finding Your Way: Navigation at Sea” is geared to older students (5th grade and up). Explorers
and Navigators” is for younger students (4th grade and below). Each tour is chock-full of challenging hands-on activities and includes a theme-specific planetarium program.

Chart Analysis and Navigation Challenge

Instead of a map, a sailor uses a chart. A nautical chart is a topographic map that shows
heights on land and depths of water in a coastal region. Working in small groups, all
students will investigate a chart of the Connecticut/Rhode Island shoreline. Compass Rose:
A chart has one or more compass roses to indicate the cardinal directions: North, South
East, and West. Direction is expressed in degrees of a circle and intermediate points may
also be indicated. An outer ring shows true north and an inner ring shows magnetic north.
True north is the direction along the earth’s surface towards the north pole while magnetic
north follows the earth’s magnetic field lines, and is the way a compass points. Magnetic
declination, the difference between true north and magnetic north, varies according to
location. For their chart activities, students will use the outer ring of the compass rose, true
north. Why might it be important for a sailor to know in which direction he is heading?
Legend: Students will find symbols for key features on land, such as lighthouses, water
towers, and churches. Why might it be helpful to be able to locate and recognize tall Latitude and Longitude
landmarks from your vessel? What about objects in the water or at the water’s edge? No exploration of a nautical chart would be complete without mention of the lines
Would it be useful to know where a dock is, or where there are jagged rocks? What about of Latitude and Longitude. They give to everything on a chart (including ships)
objects in the water? Buoys are floating devices that may be used to mark a channel, mark its unique address, made of a north-south (Latitude) number and an east-west
a navigational hazard, give information or act as a mooring. On the chart, students will (Longitude) number.
locate and decipher the information surrounding several buoys. Why does each have a color, Latitude: Lines of latitude are imaginary rings circling the globe parallel to the
number, sound, or light? Why is this important information? Scale: Students will find locate Equator. Each ring is one degree wide (about 69 miles), starting with 0 degrees
and determine the scale of the chart. Is it in kilometers or feet? What is a nautical mile? at the Equator and increasing to 90 degrees at each pole. When you know your
Nautical charts also provide critical information on water depth at various locations. latitude, you know which ring you’re on, but not how far east or west. If you were
Bathymetry is the study of underwater terrain – the depths and underwater features of lake, at latitude 41 degrees North, the ring would pass through Mystic, Connecticut;
stream, river, and ocean bottoms. Why might it be important for a sailor to know how deep Cleveland, Ohio; and Rome, Italy. Are you in Mystic or in Rome?
the water is? Students will be guided to read the randomly placed black numbers on the Longitude: To know that answer, you need to know the second part of your address,
chart, check back to the scale, and determine the unit of measurement used. Now, decide which is longitude. Longitude is based on a series of imaginary rings running from
what kind of vessel you are sailing, how big it is and how much water it draws. Where can one pole of the Earth to the other. Also called meridians, they start with the Prime
you safely go? Older students will have the opportunity to use the compass roses and a set Meridian at Greenwich, England (established by international agreement in 1884).
of parallel rulers to chart a course for the Museum’s classic wooden schooner, Brilliant. To At the Equator, where the meridians are farthest apart, about 69 miles separates
get from one safe harbor to another, the students will have to navigate from buoy to buoy, each degree, and the Earth turns through 1000 miles or 15 degrees every hour.
avoid shallow water, and record their compass headings on a work sheet.

Chronometer
Now that we know how latitude and longitude give unique addresses to everything on the Earth’s surface, let’s find out how to use navigational
instruments to find actual addresses. Today’s technology, using satellites in the global positioning system or GPS, is almost magical in its accuracy
and ease of use, but it uses time-honored ideas about intersecting circles and lines (called “trilateration”). Before GPS and even today sailors
found those intersecting lines using three instruments. The first is the Sun itself; the second (for longitude) is a very accurate timepiece (the
chronometer) showing time at the Prime Meridian; and the third (for latitude) is the sextant.
Finding longitude in the open ocean used to be almost impossible. Not knowing how far east or west they were, sailors could miss their
destination. They needed a timepiece accurate and reliable enough to show the time difference (and thus, given the Earth’s steady rate of turning
15 degrees every hour, the distance) from their reference point, the Prime Meridian. Sailors needed that timepiece, and it didn’t exist until the
British Parliament established a prize of 20,000 pounds –equivalent to millions today – for anyone inventing the needed instrument. After decades Sextant
of work, the clockmaker John Harrison won the prize in 1773 with his chronometer.
If you carry a chronometer set to Greenwich time (say, 5 PM) and compare that time to your local noon (by looking at the sun at its zenith), you
know you are 5 hours (or 75 degrees) west of Greenwich. You can plot that on your chart to get the east-west fix that goes with the north-south fix
from your sextant, and you know where you are.
A sextant and earlier instruments of its kind all do the same thing: find the angle between two objects. To find latitude, the sextant measures the
angle between a celestial object such as the Sun or the North Star, and the horizon. If you use the sextant to “shoot the Sun” at its highest point
(the zenith, or local noon), and find its angle above the horizon, that is your latitude. Likewise, you can use Polaris, or the North Star as your guide.
This is best done at nautical twilight when the stars are bright but the horizon is still visible.
Photo credit: Mystic Seaport

Tour of Historic Vessel

All students will tour one of the historic vessels of Mystic Seaport. On deck, they will
locate the compass, often not immediately apparent. On the Charles W. Morgan, for
example, it is located within the protection of the cabin’s skylight, while on the Joseph
Conrad it is found encased in curious looking stand called a binnacle. They will also
investigate the steering mechanism of the vessel and understand how the wheel turns
the rudder to turn the ship. What about the sails? What is their role in steering the
vessel, and how is this accomplished? Who is the navigator on board a vessel, and
what are the tools he needs to do his job?
Photo credit: Mystic Seaport Photo credit: Mystic Seaport

Disasters At Sea
Even under the most experienced captain, and equipped with the latest technology, disasters at sea do occur. The cause is usually bad weather,
and most disasters occur near shore where wind and waves make safe navigation difficult. Older students will visit the New Shoreham Live-Saving
Station. Built in 1874, this historic structure once guarded Old Harbor on Block Island, Rhode Island. In 1968, it was exchanged for a reproduction
and brought to Mystic Seaport by barge. Students will tour the building and see equipment commonly used for rescue. In boat rescue, a crew of
six well-trained men pulled a sturdy surfboat, weighing up to 1,000 pounds, to the water, launched her into the rough surf and rowed her out to
the foundering vessel. If the sea was too rough for a surfboat or a heavier lifeboat equipped with sails to make the trip, a cannon-like gun called a
Lyle gun shot a projectile carrying a lighter “messenger” line to the shipwreck where sailors still aboard could pull in a heavy line called a hawser.
The hawser was secured and then used to pull back and forth a life car – a tiny capsule-shaped rescue vehicle. It could carry eleven people at a
time, with air supply for three minutes. Cumbersome and terrifying, the life car was eventually replaced by the breeches buoy, a “pair of pants”
attached to a buoyant ring. Awkward as it sounds, this simple device saved thousands of lives, one by one. For the men and women at sea, good Student Activities
navigation skills may save lives. For students visiting Mystic Seaport, the study of navigation provides a window into the past, an appreciation Continued On Next Page
of the technology of the present, and inspiration for the future.