Navigation by the Ancients

Ancient mariners knew that the sea is large and getting lost was easy especially if someone ventured out far from the coast.  So how did ancient navigators, like the Polynesians, found their way and guided their boats on the intended course across vast oceans to safe harbors?    

Ancient navigators used local knowledge and lore to guide them.  Such knowledge was amassed from fanciful narrations of sailors who upon their return spoke about distant lands, monsters and of people they met.    

The logbooks and diaries aboard a sailboat recorded everything from how long it took to travel between two sites, and the routes they took were drawn on extremely valuable and often illustrated maps.  A reliable method to fixing one’s position was and still is by monitoring depth soundings. Herodotus in the fourth century BC said “when you get 11 fathoms on the lead you are one day’s distance from Alexandria”.  We used depth soundings in our crossing of the strait of Bonifacio when we got close to the island of Magdalena north of Sardinia.

In antiquity as today sailors were familiar with seasonal variations, prevailing winds and wave patterns of the seas near the lands they lived.  They Minoans were pioneers of long-distance travel as seen in the sixteen-century BC mural found in the island of Santorini.  They took advantage of the strong northerly wind Meltemi that blows daily in the Aegean during the summer months that propelled them to Crete and as far as Egypt.     

The first seafarers followed the land or sailed to nearby islands thus navigators depended on coastal navigation.  The most celebrated of the Ancient Sailors was the Greek Pytheas who left from Marseille in 325 BC sailed to the British Isles, Scandinavia, Baltic Sea and Thule that it was likely Iceland or even North America.  

Ptolemy a second century Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer assigned coordinates of latitude and longitude to as many as 8,000 geographic locations.  His atlas was carved initially on wooden blocks.  While a recent publication of his work was on the 1482 edition of Geographia. 

The Sirens

Emerging from the Underworld, Odysseus and his few remaining men returned to the island of Circe to learn from her that they were about to begin the most dangerous part of their journey.

According to Circe they must sail past Sirens’ island, who were sea nymphs, and whose songs drew men to a watery grave. The Sirens (Greek: Σειρηνες) were maidens of Persephone, who were transformed to birds by Demeter, Persephone’s mother, in order to assist in the search for her daughter who was abducted by Hades the God of Underworld.  

After their failure to find Persephone they settled on the island of Anthemoessa, which according to Homer was situated between Circe’s island and the rock of Skyla. It is not known with certainty where the island of Anthemoessa was located.  As Capo Circeo was on the north end of the bay of Napoli and Skyla was further south the likely candidates were either the island of Ischia or Capri in the Campania region of Italy.  

When Odysseus and his companions passed by the Sirens and were unmoved by their songs, the legend has it, the Sirens threw themselves into the seas and were metamorphosed into the rocks, as it had been decreed that they should live only till some one hearing their song should pass by unmoved.  Some impressive rocks near Capri are likely connected with the legend of Sirens self-destruction.  

Odysseus on the advice of Circe plugs his crew ears with bee wax and ties himself on the mast.  He admonishes his men to keep rowing and ignore his pleas to untie him.

We sailed past the land of the Sirens on the west coast of Italy.  We kept a safe distance and though we did not plug our ears with bee wax or tied Nikos-our skipper-on the mast, no seductive songs reached our ears on our sail to the Aeolian Islands.