Tall Sips Lecture

Starting Feb. 6, Tall Ships Portland will be taking lectures to the next level. Join Tim Queeney as he presents a fascinating look at the History of Navigation. Get there at 5:00 to get a seat and a refreshing drink; at 5:30 Tim will start us at Square One. Here’s a teaser:

“The earliest form of navigation involved bumping along a shore, noting landmarks. Later, seafarers of the Mediterranean, like the bold Phoenicians, used circumpolar stars and the sun to help determine direction in trips at night and out of sight of land. The Polynesian navigators of the Pacific developed naked eye star techniques even further. When the magnetic compass arrived in Europe in the 13th century, the idea of fixed courses arose. With compasses came the Portolan chart – a map with rhumb line magnetic courses to follow (charts were so important in the 15th century they were considered state secrets!) A compass, however, only shows direction. The next goal was to find one’s position on the open sea. That meant determining latitude and longitude — the streets and avenues that describe locations on the earth.”