Every time I read about the age of exploration, it’s always mentioned that there were numerous ‘advances in sailing and navigation’ that made it possible, but they never elaborate on what those things were or how they helped.
Some make passing reference to things like the introduction of the lateen sail and the compass…but when I research those, it turns out they existed well before the 1400s, so what am I missing? What were these specific advances I keep hearing about? (I did read the article about the development of the Portuguese caravel, but as someone who has never sailed I’ll admit I don’t think I grasped exactly why this was a big deal—or why it took til the 1400s to develop it)
Anyone here know a thing or two about sailing /navigation history?
I don’t know much. I seem to recall that around that time (give or take 200 years) they learned to ride the ocean currents.
According to this, it was the ability to figure out latitude and later longitude.
Some of the early instruments used to assist sailors in determining latitude were the cross-staff, astrolabe, and quadrant. The astrolabe dates back to ancient Greece, when it was used by astronomers to help tell time, and was first used by mariners in the late
> fifteenth century. It was used to measure the altitude of the Sun and stars to determine latitude
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Mi-Oc/Navigation-at-Sea-History-of.html
This seems like a strange comment on that site:
"During the mid-thirteenth century, mariners began realizing that maps could be helpful and began keeping detailed records of their voyages.
It seems like the realization that maps were helpful should have come a long time before the 13th century.
I would think it was the slow introduction of more accurate and extensive maps that helped the most as most shipping stayed within sight of land.
Also, tables/almanacs were used to help determine latitude. Those would be refined and expanded over time.
The really big deal was the invention of a marine chronometer so a ship at sea could determine longitude. But that didn’t come until the 1700s (give or take a bit…but not really good until maybe the 1800s).
This is a really interesting book about the marine chronometer and the background of the problem:
I can confirm the fabulousness of Longitude. It addresses this question specifically while being extraordinarily well-written. I once saw the the author (Dava Sobel) speak, and it all tracked: she is a sharp cookie, as it were!
I think we are also forgetting incremental improvements in the ships themselves. They got larger and faster over time (and, presumably, more seaworthy). I know nothing of ship architecture but I suspect 18th century ships were more capable than 15th century ships.
Mark Chrisler’s podcast “The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong” did a three part series on solving the longitude problem back in September 2021. The episodes are S10, Long Story Sort parts 1-3, and run a total of nearly four hours.
+2 on the book.
That a largely self-educated man could build multiple devises, with compensations for temperature, pressure and motion with 10 times the order of magnitude for precision as his peers without having even a basic experience of being watchmakers apprentice is awesome.
I am just as in awe of some of his earlier work e.g. Brocklesby Park tower clock, built in 1722, with a near frictionless wooden mechanism which has run virtually continuously for 3 centuries.
The Age of Exploration started hundreds of years before the longitude problem was solved. There were inventions that spurred that epoch, but the biggest driver was the enormous wealth arriving with the first voyagers to return to Europe from Asia by sea. This made the investment in larger and more advanced ships lucrative.
Maps were usually tightly guarded secrets by traders and merchantmen back then. They were among the most prized loot from a captured ship. Constant warfare (and many captured ships) as well as advances in printing technology may have made them more widely available near the start of the Age of Discovery.
If I remember my James Burke correctly, it was a bunch of things coming together in a relatively short period of time that had been around for awhile. Lateen sails meant that ships could tack effectively for the first time. This enabled sailors to go places they had avoided due to unfavorable wind patterns. Someone put a compass in a box with a card marked with right angles and now you had something you could navigate with. Then the Turks started jacking up the prices of overland spices, meaning trying by sea becomes more appealing. That means bigger ships, which means a switch to a stern-post rudder system rather than steering oars, which is must handier and enables the ship to point into the wind quicker. Throw in a con man and a bored queen and viola!
I’ve read this too and loved it, though it’s been a long time. But as I recall this is about a later time period, and doesn’t really answer my question about the 15th century
This answers the question of why they started looking for new innovations. But I’m interested in what those specific innovations were—as far as I can tell, the compass and lateen sale weren’t new.
I get that there may have been new motivations to use those things—but that’s not the same thing as claiming that new inventions, etc. in the 15th century helped make exploration possible, if the inventions aren’t actually new. That’s what prompted my question—I’ve seen the claim in so many history books, without any of them ever specifying what those things were.
Probably 90% motivation and 10% innovation…and most of that innovation was just bigger ships that required what, I guess, might be called inventive modifications in sails, steering, and navigation, but there wasn’t any eureka moment that made those bigger ships suddenly possible.
Ok—that’s a fair point. But you also dismiss lateen sails out of hand because they were already known.
Just skimming Wikipedia, it seems the Portuguese caravel was important not for a single novel feature but rather because it offered a novel combination of two extant features: a relatively sleek hull (previously used on the Portuguese’s rowed warships with the lateen sail, which until then was used on the much-less-nimble “roundships” that plied the Mediterranean with cargo).
It seems there was a second you-put-your-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate moment when the Portuguese paired their agile caravels with a bulkier and more heavily-armed nau. The effect, I’m speculating, was similar to how 20th-century armies combined Specialized infantry with armored vehicles to create what we now call “mechanized infantry.”
This post contains a lot of speculation because I know there are board members who know a lot about the age of sail, and I defer to them on this subject. But overall, it doesn’t seem as mysterious to me as it might to you. Then again, I spent a lot of time in dinghies as a kid. And I see that naval histories can be coy in explaining what changed in the 15th century CE.
Edit: clarity
I’m not dismissing the importance of lateen sails. I just don’t see how the lateen sail counts as a ‘new innovation’ in that period when it had existed for a long time. If the claim is that new inventions and technology in that period helped launch the age of exploration, I’m just curious what those new technologies were.
I read that caravel article too. But surely, if the claim is true, we should be able to come up with other examples of new technology? I’m not doubting the claim, I’m just curious what those specific new technologies were.
Answering my own question (no idea why I couldn’t find this before), this page has what looks like some very specific inventions I’d not heard of:
That was kind of my point: the info about both novel combinations (slender hulls + lateen sails and caravels + naus) is in the two Wikipedia articles I read (one on caravels and another, linked in the first, on the evolution of Portuguese sailing ships).
You’ve read the same articles, but seem to be ignoring the very idea of these novel combinations being more than the sum of their parts. Did you somehow miss that?
If not, why don’t you at least accept these things as a partial explanation? I’m not hurling insults here—I miss stuff in things I read sometimes too—I’m just confused about why you won’t even discuss those points, let alone accept them.
If you want to look up more on early navigation maps, the word portolan will be useful in your googlings:
One thing I’ll note about navigation is that up until about 1400 or so, there was no good north star. Due to axial precession of the Earth, the place on the night sky the north pole points at slowly moves around. Right now it points very close to Polaris, but 600 years ago Polaris was around 5 degrees away from the pole. Earlier it was even further away.
It’s not that they couldn’t navigate without a north star, but it would have made the process more cumbersome. With one, just find its altitude in degrees and that’s your latitude. Without one, find the altitude of some specific star and the time of day and then look up how much to adjust that altitude to find the latitude. I think this was what they had to do in the southern hemisphere, once they got sailing in those parts.
ETA: for some reason the link to the wiki-image of precession does not load. Well, click on it to get there.