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Abraham Zacuto
(c. 1450–1515?),the foremost writer on astronomy in fifteenth-century Castile. Zacuto was born in Salamanca, Spain, to Jewish parents. His principal work, the Almanach perpetuum coelestium motuum, ...
aircraft
See bombers, fighters, float planes, flying boats, gliders, and helicopters. For carrier aircraft see carriers. See also air power
Andrés de Urdaneta
(1498–1568),Spanish naval officer who navigated a Pacific passage. Andrés de Urdaneta stands as a major figure in the history of transpacific navigation, and is largely credited for the discovery ...
angle of cut
In navigation, the smaller angle at which two position lines on a chart intersect. The reliability of a fix from intersecting position lines depends on the angle of cut. When fixing a ship's position ...
armillary sphere
An instrument used since ancient times to demonstrate and observe the movements of the heavens. It consists of a number of rings (armillaries) representing celestial great circles such as the ...
astrolabe
An instrument used to make astronomical measurements, typically of the altitudes of celestial bodies, and in navigation for calculating latitude, before the development of the sextant. In its basic ...
Athena
In Iliad 5 Homer describes how Athena took off the finely wrought robe ‘which she herself had made and worked at with her own hands’ and ‘armed herself for grievous war’. This incident encapsulates ...
azimuth
The angle made by a line on the surface of the Earth with magnetic meridian. In radar terminology, the direction at right angles to the direction of radar propagation.
Ben Finney
(b. 1933),American anthropologist. Ben Rudolph Finney was born in San Diego, California, on October 1, 1933, to a naval aviator, Leon H. Finney, and a schoolteacher and nurse, Melba ...
branch
The certificate or diploma which used to be given by Trinity House to a pilot qualified to navigate a ship in British waters. A full branch from Trinity House qualified a pilot to navigate without ...
bridge
An elevated platform built above the upper deck of a powered vessel, from which a ship is normally navigated and from where all activities on deck can be seen and controlled by the captain or officer ...
Brussels
The capital of Belgium and of the Belgian province of Brabant; the headquarters of the European Commission is located there.
buoy
A floating mark used in the IALA maritime buoyage system to mark a channel, bank, spoil ground, or similar area which the navigator needs to know about. The marking system in force in any particular ...
by guess and by God
A phrase which in earlier days described a form of navigation under which the ship's master or navigator relied more on his experience and memory to bring his vessel safely to her destination than on ...
cartography
The science and craft of drawing maps and charts; on the latter, see charts and chart-making. In Babylonian and Greek antiquity the world was thought to be a disc surrounded ...
celestial navigation
The sextant, the chronometer (nowadays possibly a quartz watch), the nautical almanac, and navigation tables (now perhaps some form of calculator or computer) in one form or another remain the ...
centreboard
A device which is raised or lowered through the bottom of a sailing vessel, and is housed in a centreboard case. When lowered it increases the vessel's lateral area and its resistance to leeway. ...
chart
A map primarily intended for navigation, one of the earliest being the plane chart, hence plain sailing. In very general terms, two types of nautical chart are used at sea, the straightforward ...
clear-view screen
A circular disc of plate glass, which is revolved at high speed by an electric motor, incorporated in the glass screen of the navigating bridge. The centrifugal motion throws off all rain, sleet, or ...
Clermont
Or, more correctly, the ‘North River Steamboat of Clermont’, is generally acknowledged as the world's first commercially successful steamboat, though the one John Fitch (1743–98) built in 1788, which ...
