Navigation History

Timeline

1200s Compass in use at sea in Europe

1420-1460 Prince Henry, The Navigator, at Sagres, Portugal

1457 George Purback issued first almanac

1460 Nautical quadrant in use at sea (earliest mention)

1474 Abraham Zacuto issued Almanach Perpetuum containing sun’s declination

ca. 1485 Pedro Reinel map of African Coast

1481 Mariner’s Astrolabe in use at sea (Portuguese sailing down African Coast)

1485 Tables of sun’s declination in manuscript form

1492 Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas

1509 Table of sun’s declination in printed form in Portugal

ca. 1515 Cross-Staff in use at sea by Portuguese for latitude by Polaris

1519 Ferdinand Magellan in service of Spain leaves 20 September on circumnavigation

1500s Gerard Mercator (fl 1537-1594) brought map/chart making to an exact science

1545 Arte de Navagar by Pedro de Medina published in Spain

1570 Map of the World by Fernando Oliveira

1574 A Regiment for the Sea by William Bourne, London published

1595-1765 Back-Staff (Davis Quadrant) in use at sea

1620 The Mayflower arrives in Plymouth Harbor and the English Puritans establish the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts.

1654 Dutch East India Company started keeping inventory of navigational gear

1655 Cross-Staff, Mariner’s Astrolabe, Back-Staff, and nautical almanac are used for declination

1670 Mariner’s Astrolabe no longer listed in East India Company inventory

1696 French National Observatory’s Nautical Almanac first published

1698-1701 Edmund Halley studies variation of the compass

1714 Act of Queen Anne establishing Board of Longitude

1731 Quadrant of Reflection Hadley & Godfrey

1731 East India Company discontinues use of the Davis quadrant at sea

1735 John Harrison completes H.1 Tested 1736 HMS Centurion & HMS Orford to Lisbon and back

1740 Anson aboard HMS Centurion with fleet to capture Manila Galleon and circumnavigation

1747 Octant was standard issue on Dutch East India Company ships

1759 John Harrison completes his prize-winning marine time piece

1766 First Nautical Almanac with Lunar Tables published for the year 1767

1768-1771 Captain James Cook’s first circumnavigation, without chronometers

1769 John Bird makes sextant for John Cambell

1770 Jesse Ramsden completes his dividing engine for making sextant scales

1772-1776 Captain James Cook’s second voyage with four chronometers

1802 The New American Practical Navigator by Nathaniel Bowditch is published

1831 Captain Robert Fitzroy and HMS Beagle begin voyage with 22 chronometers

1837 The first time ball is set up in a Portsmouth, England, shipyard for determining error and rate of chronometers

1837 Thomas Hubbard Sumner publishes A New & Accurate Method of Finding a Ship’s Position at Sea by Projection of a Mercator’s Chart

1839 African captives aboard the schooner, La Amistad, revolt against their oppressors. The incident ends up in the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1841, the Africans finally win their freedom and passage back home.

1841 Ship Gentleman sails from New York to West Africa with 35 survivors of La Amistad

1858 American Nautical Almanac is printed without astronomical ephemeris

1864 Charles Hervey Townshend uses a series of lunars to check his chronometer

1878 Taffrail Log is developed

1905 First regular wireless Radio Time Signals from Washington, D.C.

by 1913 Lunar Tables are dropped from the British Nautical Almanac

1931 Dead Reckoning Altitude and Azimuth Table by Arthur Ageton, was published, H.O. 211

1936 First volume of Tables of Computed Altitude and Azimuth published, H.O. 214

1940 Volume V of Tables of Computed Altitude and Azimuth is published as a W.P.A. project

1981 Sight Reduction Tables for Marine Navigation is published, H.O. 229, as six volumes calculated and typeset by computer