I  MAKE no apology to the reader for having taken up so much of his time in a consideration of the methods which obtained during the time of Christopher Columbus, not merely because by his splendid seamanship and navigation a new world was revealed to the old, but because of the two arts in question at the time when the Middle Ages were beginning to ebb into obscurity, he was one of the finest if not the very best exponent. Not that he was very amply rewarded for his wondrous achievements. Although it is true he did receive other remuneration, yet his pay was only at the rate of 1600 francs per annum, and that of his two captains was but 960 francs. The crew’s wages were from 12 to 25 francs a month in addition to their mess allowance.
But now we find ourselves in the sixteenth century. Thanks to the new interest in nautical matters which had been aroused by Prince Henry the Navigator, thanks to the marvellous and true yarns which ocean-going skippers brought back of their discoveries, there170 began a new sort of profession for men who were at all attracted to the sea. It was a profession which, obviously, could not exist for many, nor last for many centuries. But for those who were wearied of shore monotony, who had ambition and dash and loved adventure, there was a keen fascination in becoming one of that great band of “new land seekers.” Charles V, you will remember, became King of Spain in the year 1517, while the period of 1485 to 1547 was covered by the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII of England. Not till the year 1555 did Charles V retire into the monastery of Yuste. Besides the influence of these three remarkable men at a critical time of the world’s history, there was also roaming over Europe that Renaissance movement which, checked here and there, could not be utterly constrained when it spread itself over shipping. Or, to change altogether the metaphor, spring was in the air: the buds were about to burst forth into the glorious flowers of new colonies.
 
Sixteenth-Century Caravel at Anchor.
After the Woodcut of Hansen Burgmair.
And since it was obvious that discovery had to be made by traversing long expanses of ocean, and that this could only be done by a sound knowledge of navigation, those in authority were not slow to realise that lectures and instruction on this subject at home meant presently an increase of territory and wealth across the seas. Prince Henry on his promontory had been the first to grasp this. Now also Charles V not only established a Pilot Major for the examination of those who sought to take ships to the West Indies, but also founded a lecture on the art of navigation which was given in the Contractation House at Seville. Those anxious to qualify as pilots had to learn thoroughly the use of the astrolabe and quadrant, and obtain a thorough grasp of the theory and practice of sailing a ship from one port to another out of sight of land. For this instruction they had to pay fees, but171 it more than repaid them many times over when they were able to bring back such valuable commodities. Furthermore, as experience gains knowledge, so every voyage taught them something of their art which hitherto they had not known—the direction of a current, the state of the moon when high tide occurred at such and such an hour, the depth of those new harbours they had entered, the position of the outlying shoals, the landmarks on shore, the temper of the natives, the kind of commodities which could be obtained in the districts, and so on. The pilots brought all these details home at the end of every voyage, made the necessary corrections in the charts (and this not by choice, but by compulsion), so that always there was being compiled a set of sailing directions and an ever improving bundle of charts which were simply invaluable to State and seamen alike.
Thus also there came to be published treatises and manuals on the seaman’s art, for the instruction of a community that numbered very few sailors in proportion to its landsmen. Such authors as Martin Cortes, Alonso de Chavez, Hieronymo de Chavez, Roderigo Zamorano in time wrote these works, and their influence not merely on Spain, but upon England, was considerable, until the English seamen of the time of Elizabeth had produced such nautical experts of their own that they were able to write better books themselves. But even prior to that time England had begun to see the wisdom of Spain; and Henry VIII, following the example of Charles V, “for the increase of knowledge in his Seamen, with princely liberalities erected three severall Guilds or brotherhoods, the one at Deptford here upon the Thames, the other at Kingston upon Hull, and the third at Newcastle upon Tine.” So, indeed, states Hakluyt. That at Deptford was licensed in 1513, “in honour of the Holy Trinity and St. Clement in the172 Church of Deptford Stronde for reformation of the Navy lately much decayed by admission of young men without experience, and of Scots, Flemings, and Frenchmen as loadsmen.” Navy is used here in its literal sense, meaning shipping as a whole. The word “loadsmen”—otherwise “leadsmen”—was the customary expression in the North of Europe for pilot. To this day the Dutch word for pilot is “loods,” “lood” being the Dutch for lead. What does this signify? It shows—does it not?—that until, thanks to Spain, the astrolabe began to be used in Northern Europe, the pilot was not so much he who found his way by fixing his position from the heavenly bodies, but he who felt his way by the sounding of the lead. In a sentence, then, whilst of course the lead and line are essential even to modern navigation, yet historically they belong to the Middle Ages and right back to Greece and even earlier; while the astrolabe and the finding of a ship’s latitude are essentially the beginning of that new order of things which we have already noted. So long as ships were content to do little more than coasting they had no need of an astrolabe; but as a lead and line are not much good to one who navigates the Atlantic to the West Indies, so the new species of voyaging coincided with the new instrument for ascertaining a ship’s position.
 
A Sixteenth-Century Astrolabe.
This instrument, in the S. Kensington Museum, is supposed actually to have been on board one of the ships of the Spanish Armada.
 
Astrolabe used by the English Navigators of the Sixteenth Century.
What, then, was the astrolabe? It was an instrument used for taking the altitude of the sun and stars. For two hundred years before it was used by the Christian seamen of the Mediterranean, it had been employed by the Arabian pilots in the eastern seas. The derivation of such a curious word is not without interest. The Arabic is “asthar-lab,” and this in turn came from the two Greek words, ?στ?ρ and λαμβανω, meaning “to take a star.” It consisted of a flat brass ring, some 15 inches in diameter, of which an excellent173 illustration can here be seen. It was graduated along the rim in degrees and minutes, fitted with two sights. There was a movable index which turned on the centre and marked the angle of elevation. When the mariner wished to take the height of the sun with this instrument he proceeded as follows: The sun being near the meridian or south, the pilot observed the same until it reached its greatest height. Then, holding the ring on one of his fingers, he turned the alhidada up174 and down until he saw the shadow of the sun pass through both the sights thereof, being sure that the astrolabe hung upright. The astrolabe was best for taking the height of the sun when the sun was very high at 60, 70, or 80 degrees; for the sun, coming near “unto your zenith,” has great power of light for piercing the two sights of the alhidada of the astrolabe, and then it was not good to use the cross-staff (reference to which will be made below), because the sun hurt a man’s eyes and was also too high for the cross-staff. Furthermore the astrolabe, was a more correct method than that of the cross-staff.
It was thanks to the aid of Martin Behaim, a distinguished cosmographer who came to Lisbon to co-operate with the learned men there assembled, that an improved sea astrolabe was adapted for the purpose of determining the distance from the Equator, by means of the altitude of the sun or stars at sea. There had, indeed, been in use for some time a land astrolabe for finding the latitude of a place, and it was but a natural advance that this instrument should be adapted for use on board ship, so that the mariner might be able to ascertain his position on the vast expanse of trackless ocean. We are all most ready to admire and extol the men and the ships which made such daring voyages and discoveries in the past; but I submit that nothing like adequate recognition has been paid to the essential value of the astrolabe and cross-staff, or their successor, the modern sextant. Even if in those days which marked the close of the Middle Ages there had suddenly been invented and built a whole fleet of turbine steamships with capable crews, yet still without the instrument of finding latitude they could have had only vague ideas as to their position and would only have been able to produce unsatisfactory charts. Indeed, as a modern writer has remarked, it was this improved sea astrolabe175 which “removed the last doubt in Columbus’s mind as to the possibility of carrying out his plans of discovery.”
Thus it came about that the man who could work an astrolabe was a person of some importance. He was held in high honour by the crew, since he alone was able to state the ship’s position and her course thence to her nearest port. Naturally, therefore, those Arabian pilots and Oriental astronomers who had been brought to the Iberian peninsula would go swaggering along the streets of Lisbon wearing these sea-rings conspicuously both as their badge of office and as indicative of their dignity. It was Behaim’s astrolabe which was used by Columbus, by Vasco da Gama, by Diaz, and others in their stupendous voyages: and still more valuable was it with the addition of the tables of the sun’s declination, first reduced by Behaim also. Nevertheless, we must not omit to bear in mind that as far back as the eighth century Messahala, a learned Rabbi, had already written a treatise on the astrolabe, and that even earlier still—in the sixth century B.C.—the astrolabe for use on shore had been invented by Hipparchus. But had the achievements of the ancients much influence, do you ask, on the cosmographers and astronomers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? The answer is most certainly in the affirmative; and the greatest experts of this period had a very complete knowledge of the work of their predecessors.
But for the same purpose of taking the height of the sun there was employed an instrument called the cross-staff; of which the Spanish word (adapted from the Greek) was the “balla stella.” The drawback to the astrolabe was that it was difficult to use it with accuracy owing to the rolling and pitching of the ship. Therefore the cross-staff, being more steadily held in the hand, began to supersede the astrolabe. Bourne, the famous Elizabethan navigational expert, insisted176 that because the sea “causeth the shippe to heave” the best way to take the sun’s height was with the cross-staff: furthermore, the degrees on this instrument were marked larger than on the astrolabe. Also in a larger instrument an error was seen sooner. The method of use in taking the height of the sun, he explained, was as follows: Note with your compass the sun when the latter approaches the meridian. When it has arrived at S. by E. then begin to take the sun’s height thus: Put the “transitorie” (or cross-piece) on the long staff, set the end of the long staff close to the eye, “winking with your other eye,” and then move the transitory forwards or backwards until you see the lower end of it (“being just with the horizon”) and the upper end of it (“being just with the middle of the sun”), “both to agree with the sunne and the horizon at one time.” Observe the same until you see the sun at the highest and beginning to descend. You have then finished.
 
A Sixteenth-Century Navigator using the Cross-staff.
177
 
A Sixteenth-Century Compass Card.
It is not my intention to digress from the path of historical continuity, but let the reader bear in mind how very little the navigator of this period had to help him. He had the compass for indicating the direction of the ship’s head, and he had the astrolabe and cross-staff for showing him his altitude. But two intensely important data he could not yet obtain accurately: (1) his longitude, and (2) the distance run by the ship in any given time. Very great errors were made in both178 of these. It was not until the introduction of the log-line in the seventeenth century that a ship could tell with even approximate accuracy her daily run. For many a long year all the cunning Jews and Arabs, all the philosophers, the astronomers and physicians, all the cleverest men out of Portugal, Spain, Genoa, Ven............