Sextant: A Young Man's Daring Sea Voyage and the Men Who Mapped the World's Oceans

Before John Hadley and Thomas Godfrey independently came up with designs for the quadrant—a predecessor to the sextant, a navigation tool that measures the angle between a celestial object and the horizon—navigation at sea was less than accurate. Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendaña, for example, mapped the Solomon Islands at the wrong location, and it was 200 years before they were "discovered" again. The sextant, invented in 1759, changed all that, allowing far more accurate navigation and cartography. Barrie, an experienced sailor and former member of the British Diplomatic Service, takes readers on a tour of the history of maritime navigation, focusing on the role of the sextant in guiding explorers and aiding their efforts to map the globe. He also recalls his own voyage across the Atlantic in 1973. In a wide-ranging discussion covering the principles of celestial navigation as well as the adventures of Captain Cook, Robert FitzRoy, Matthew Flinders, and others, the author offers a detailed picture of premodern sea travel. The epilog compares this form of navigation with today's GPS navigation systems, adding context for the modern reader.