Does Celestial Navigation still have a role in navigation despite the use of digital methods?

[Tony Barwell]

Tony , --- Cheers John Sabourn

Thank you John for your replies, I must admitt I agree with you on this point, so far I have served onboard two container vessels. The newer of the two has a small shelter on the bridge wings above the external control panels, to stop the captain and pilot getting wet whilst manoeuvring in the rain, however this meant that quite often when I tried taking a stars bearing for a compass error calculation my view of the star was blocked by said covers. I may look into this point when dawing my conclusions perhaps the designers and shipping companies are making a point.

The same can be said for compliance with rule 5 of the collision regulations, surely a totally enclosed bridge won't enable the bridge team to hear any sound signals.

[happy daze john in oz]

I was only in catering so know little of deck duties, but common sence, that long lost commodity, tells me that there maty well be times when for some reason the GPs system fails. Then what, wait for it to come back in two or three days? Having a second system is the only way you can be sure it will be OK.

[j.sabourn]

#11... Sound was brought up not too far back. It was pointed out by one of our experienced members that he had been on vessels with outside microphones relaying sound into the wheelhouse. Regards John S.

[j.sabourn]

#12.. The second system as you describe it John, was our only system not so long back. With what I have read on some of these posts you would be hard pushed to train a competent Celestial navigator, among all the other subjects wihin 2 years sitting in a classroom. With the 3 ticket system of days of yore this was spread out over a period of about 6 years and if taking leave etc. period of at least 8 years, and that was gong pretty fast. Mates got their experience through doing the job, you can have all the paper qualifications in the world, but what use are they if you cant do the job. The subjects if I remember correctly for second mate alone was 1. English if couldn't pass this went no further. 2. Maths. 3. Meteorology 4 Navigation ( up to a certain level) this was it appears way past what is in the present curriculum for Master.5. Ship construction and stability.6 Chartwork. There maybe others I have forgotten about. Signals Semaphore and morse code up to a certain speed. International Code of Signals. Orals Rule of the Road Buoyage systems working with any ships equipment the Examiner thought necessary. The other certs. were always further advanced in navigation and were always a failing paper. I personally would not expect a candidate to be competent in such at such a small period of time, very little of it being practicable. The only thing a sextant does is measure an angle it is not a magic wand, where you read off the position Used to take the average mate about 1.25 hours to work out 5 stars. Errol Flynn and his fellow stars took liberties with the general public in his movies. Even had time to wave his sabre around and safe the damsel in distress at the same time. Cheers John S.

[j.sabourn]

Ref. the previous post these approx. times were extra to the 4 years required seatime for second mate. So you are talking about 12 years for a what is now called a Master 1. Of course this in a lot of cases took much longer and I know of people sitting at 58 years of age having 42 years at sea. JS

[j.sabourn]

#8... Neil if all you had in the boat was the sextant, without any other information. The best you would be able to get from it would be a Noon Latitude to within I would say 10 miles. Unless you had the suns declination, which I assume you would have a good idea by the day of the year etc. and the corrections which aren't too big, you could get the daily latitude approx. unless of course it was overcast. You would only be slightly worse off than our ancestors in the days of sail. Watch out for Capt. Cappy the scourge of the Spanish maine, and the Spanish senoritas. JS.

[John Pruden]

I suppose the backup system would be twitter{whatever that is} or facebook to ask were the bloody hell am I if shipping has jumped this far in 40 years what is it going to be in another 40 years how many things are not used or needed in todays shipping but the stars are always there???jp

[John Arton]

Tony
Celestial navigation, in my opinion, is an absolute requirement to be still taught in these days as reliance on GPS based system's has been shown to be prone to hi-jacking and interference by sun spot activity.
As regards modern ships design I sailed on a number of ships that were fitted with totally enclosed wheel houses but they had listening systems fitted that enabled you to hear sound signals etc. as required under SOLAS regulations. With totally enclosed wheelhouse taking sights or even compass bearings could be difficult but certainly not impossible, although it may have needed an alteration of course for a few moments to get the body you were observing into clear view.
The art of celestial navigation gives you the ships position to plus-minus a mile or so whereas gps gives you a position to metres, but do you really need to know where you are to within metres and what part of the ship is the position referring to, bridge, focsle or what (hips 400 metres plus these days).
The other part of celestial navigation is that it taught you to NAVIGATE, not just give you a position. It taught you to observe sea states, cloud formations, signs of approaching weather, changes in depth from wave heights, colour of the oceans and its currents.
Nowadays modern officer seem intent on being glued to the radar and ecdis screens to the extent that they very rarely look out of the bridge windows or step outside of their nice warm wheelhouse to stand on the bridge wings and observe the oceans around them. So if celestial navigation is still made a requirement then at least it will get these people out of their chairs and help them to be NAVIGATORS instead of just recorders of positions given to them by an electronic gadget that is open to faults, errors and mis-representation AKA the computer that you will be using that even though you are computer savvy still manages to type the wrong words/letters that you thought you were inputting to the keyboard.
rgds
JA

[j.sabourn]

I suspect Tony Barwells compass error was for a Bridge wing gyro repeater. In my time this would have been taken on the Magnetic compass on the monkey island. Maybe as someone said in a previous post the magnetic compass has already ceased to exist. Cheers John S.

[j.sabourn]

Outside listening devices. Would have to be very careful when working on deck , and not saying that old basket up there. Might get a booming answer, I heard that, or big brother is watching you. Cheers JS