Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 248 Navigation

The Quadrant was born in this time and space less than half a century ago. Now someone tells Li Huamei that this is better than the Quadrant. Of course, she doesn't believe it—it's true that it's smaller than the Quadrant.

"Bragging." Simply put, she directly denied it.Li Huamei is different from her owner in the waters of East Asia. Her ship mainly goes to Goa, and sometimes to Manila. Through the window of these two colonial cities, she has seen most of the new things in Europe, but she has never heard of them. A better nautical instrument than a quadrant.

"Hehe, there are so many things you haven't seen before, what is a sextant?" Lin Chuanqing looked indifferent.

Li Huamei saw that there seemed to be a place where the lens was still inlaid, and was about to touch it when she heard someone shout: "Don't touch it, be careful not to scratch the glass."

Looking back, he was a man he didn't recognize, about 37 years old, tall and big.Shorthairs are generally taller, but this one is particularly tall. It looks at least six feet seven eight (1.9 meters), a head taller than the surrounding people, and has a strong body.Round face and big eyes.She was wearing a blue double-breasted jacket that Australians often wear—they called it a training uniform, and someone told her: the blue ones are for the navy, the gray ones are for the army, and the colorful ones are for everyone.His complexion is dark and his skin is very thick. It can be seen that he has been baptized by the sea wind and waves, and his expression is firm and serious.

Behind him, there were six boys wearing black school uniforms with stand-up collars, all of whom looked to be between thirteen and fourteen years old.All of them had dark complexions, but they stood firmly on the swaying deck.All of them were carrying a green canvas schoolbag and stood neatly in a row.

"Commissioner Chen, are you teaching children again?" From Lin Chuanqing's first greeting, this person should be a relatively high-level short-haired person.

"That's right, this group of children from the sailing class have rowed boats in Bopupu until now, and this time they come out just to have an internship."

He walked over, took back the sextant from Li Huamei, and said in a deep voice, "The most important part of this thing is the glass lens, if you touch it, it's useless."

Li Huamei said: "I haven't seen it before. What a rare thing, it's like a treasure."

The strong man ignored her at all, seeing Mond staggering back from the side of the ship, he reprimanded without expression: "A sailor's instrument is his life, you just throw it away and you want to be a navy?!"

"Yes, yes, I—" Mond couldn't stand upright, but he could see that he was in awe of this person, and tried hard to put on an appearance of standing at attention.

"Go back to the cabin and disband!"

"Yes!" Mond tried his best to stand at attention and salute, feeling his stomach tumbling again, and went to the side of the ship again.

"You know how to use a quadrant?" Chen Haiyang turned his head and looked at the woman in front of him. This was the first time he actually observed this woman at a close distance.According to modern standards, she is not short, at least 165cm. At the time, she was taller, taller, with thinned hair tied in a bunch at the back of her head. The otaku were all dizzy.

"Of course it will be used. This is a guy who eats." Li Huamei could see that this was a difficult guy, and said seriously.

"Let me use it first." Chen Haiyang is very interested in ancient navigation technology at the moment. Many equipment used in modern ship navigation cannot be manufactured in this time and space. How to use the mature technology of modern and ancient times becomes a matter of cultivating a new generation of sailors. main subject.

"Okay, I'll go get a box up." She flicked the ponytail that was hanging down to her ears, "But you will teach me how to use this sextant in a while!"

"Yes." The other party replied very simply.

"Commissioner Lin, is the sextant okay?" Lin Chuanqing saw Li Huamei go down the deck and asked his family.

"It's nothing special, we were supposed to teach these children." Chen Haiyang said, "Besides, she also taught us things."

"Well, to be honest, I want this girl to give me some tips on steering."

"Don't be kidding, you old snakehead, you can even cross the Pacific Ocean in a small motor sailing boat, do you still need someone to teach you this?"

"The motor sailing boat has an engine anyway." Lin Chuanqing held the steering wheel vigorously, "This kind of pure sailing boat always feels a bit wrong to the touch."

While speaking, Li Huamei climbed up to the rear stern again, carrying a box in her hand, the size and volume of this box is not small.

"This is my full set of instruments." She opened it as she spoke.

Inside the chest were several instruments, books, and rolls of charts.

"There are still a few things on the Hangzhou, they are all fixed, there is no need to bring them."

Chen Haiyang watched with interest the first thing she took out.This thing is quite large, and it is made of bronze. Its radius is about 0.6 meters. It is cast in bronze and hollowed out in the middle.Angles are engraved on the outer side of the quadrant, with a minimum scale of 0.25 degrees.There are two copper rings in the center of the circle for hanging, a thin silk thread hangs from the center of the circle, and a lead ball hangs from the end of the thread.Two copper blocks are inlaid on one straight side of the quadrant, and there are two round holes with a diameter of about 5 mm on it, through which the eyes can be used to locate the stars.

"This is the quadrant." Li Huamei explained, "Some people call it the ocean astrolabe."

"Wait, I remember that the quadrant is not like this." The more Chen Haiyang looked at it, the more he felt that this thing was different from the pattern of the quadrant he saw when he was studying in the Naval Academy.

"This is the quadrant," Li Huamei said, and then she understood, "You should be talking about the British quadrant." As she spoke, she took out a much smaller instrument, also made of bronze, and A sextant is somewhat similar.

"This is obviously a back sight!" Chen Haiyang patted his thigh, remembering the standard name in the textbook.

"Backsight? I don't know that. People call it the English Quadrant. But it works, and it's accurate."

British Quadrant.Chen Haiyang thinks this is really intuitive - it was invented by the British navigator John Davis.

"I can't see the astrolabe now, I'll show you a demonstration tonight, first look at the quadrant."

Chen Haiyang took care of the students: "You all carefully watch Instructor Li's operation!"

"This is asking me to be the instructor." Li Huamei giggled, "I'm making a fool of myself." She raised the back sight as she spoke.

The reason why the back collimator is called "back" is that it is different from the right-angle collimator used before it.The two methods of use are similar, the difference is that one needs to observe the sun directly, and the other is just the opposite, facing away from the sun.

During operation, the observer faces away from the sun and aims at the horizon through the narrow slits on the alidade on the large arc angler and the alidade on the small arc angle.Set the projection alidar by estimation, and adjust the alidator until the upper shadow falls on the upper edge of the narrow slit.At the same time the horizon can be seen.Adding the readings on the two arc anglers is the top distance.Then the specific latitude can be known through the calculation of the formula.Because the large arc of this instrument is divided diagonally, even small angles can be read accurately.The accuracy of latitude calculation has been greatly improved.

Li Huamei directly operated it again, and asked the naval students to operate one by one, asking them to calculate the latitude respectively.Although most of these children were from families in the sea, they were almost illiterate, let alone math.Relying on the bad supplements of national schools to supplement knowledge, naturally the calculation is very slow.Several people measured and calculated, and the answer they handed in was quite different from the number Li Huamei measured.

Chen Haiyang looked over the calculations of several students. Some of them obviously made a calculation error. There is no problem with the observed numbers and the calculation process.It seems that the students' comprehension is not bad at all.After all, in the previous on-shore teaching, they have instilled in students such knowledge as: earth, latitude and longitude, time difference and basic geography and astronomy.Otherwise, just talking about the concept of latitude can make people anxious to death.

"They know the latitude and longitude?" Li Huamei was a little surprised.Almost no one in Daming understands this concept, even those who spend their lives at sea every day don’t know it, and they’re not interested in it—there is another system in ancient China’s navigation.

Chen Haiyang is a little strange, isn't the concept of latitude and longitude the most basic concept in navigation: "I have taught them, otherwise how would I navigate?"

Li Huamei was a little emotional: "I don't see more than ten people in Daming who know what latitude and longitude are." Suspicion arose in her heart.These Australians always say that they are immigrants from Song Dynasty who were lost overseas in Australia. Since they are alone overseas, how can they know European science?And these instruments.It's as if they've been dealing with Europe.But Europeans have never heard of this place.How strange.

Then a small bronze plate was taken out, with scales, small holes and pointers on it, and the edge was serrated, which looked a bit like a circular saw blade at first glance.

"Night timer. But it can't be used now. It won't work until midnight."

"Using the punctuality of stars passing the meridian to determine midnight time?" Chen Haiyang speculated.

"You're really good, you can tell it at a glance! Have you used it?"

"No, before you took it out, I really never thought that there is such a thing in the world."

"It's a nautical booklet." She took out a book, with a rough hardcover cover that was very worn.

"This is—"

""Seafarer's Calendar." Chen Haiyang was a naval officer, and his English is not bad.The title of the book is self-explanatory.

"Do you understand English?"

"A little bit." Chen Haiyang was very humble.

"Hehe, it's really amazing." Li Huamei boasted casually, wondering why everyone in this group of Australians knew a few words of English?Dutch or Spanish seems to be more useful to say that Australians trade and establish a country.

She didn't know that thanks to the universal education and the college entrance examination system in another time and space, almost everyone in China under the age of 30 knows a little English.

The book is full of astronomical charts that navigators must use, mainly meridian charts, charts for every quarter compass access scale and distance and sailing charts for every degree, as well as natural numbers, logarithmic tables of trigonometric functions, tide table.It is a very handy sailor's reference book.

"This book is only sold in the UK now. It's hard to find. This is the last time I got it from a British ship." Clearly a trophy.

The other was printed in Portuguese, and Chen Haiyang couldn't understand it, so Li Huamei had to explain it.

The title of the book is "Rules of Operation of the Astrolabe and Quadrant".The purpose is to provide a reference table for adding latitude and longitude.Whether the longitude and latitude are determined by the sun or the stars, it is necessary to relate the change of latitude to the distance traveled, and sailors have a distance table.Generally posted on each bearing of the compass to increase or decrease latitude and longitude.The book contained a table of distances, a table of latitude from Cape Ultima to the equator, and a table of solar declination on a 4-year cycle.This book was published as a guide for navigators. It has a very long history. It was officially published in 1509, and the early version may be earlier. At least when Columbus sailed in 1492, he used this book.Subsequent revisions and reprints.

Chen Haiyang flipped through these manuals, looking at the various rules and tables on them.What a great effort humans have made to break through their own territories and explore new worlds.Although these manuals seem rough, and some guidelines and figures are even wrong, they are accumulated by the wisdom and experience of countless navigators. Standing in front of them, one can't help but be in awe.

Isn't this Li Huamei in front of her one of those senior navigators?Chen Haiyang, who had always been skeptical and repulsive towards her, had a subtle emotion in his heart.

The naval cadets were all half-grown children. Although they were restrained by strict military discipline, they saw many strange things that had never been seen coming out of the box. While Chen Haiyang was not paying attention, they all looked around.

The last thing Li Huamei took out was rolls of paper: "These are charts. They are very expensive." She joked.

These charts are all Mercator charts drawn according to the latest scientific and technological achievements of this time and space.Medieval sea charts were flat.This chart was originally a pattern of compass bearing lines drawn up for medieval Mediterranean charts, and all the north-south lines it gives are parallel, and the east-west distance becomes more distorted as the distance from the equator increases.The result is that the bearings on the charts are often very inaccurate.Mercator invented a new projected chart.The most fundamental feature of this projection chart, which distinguishes it from planimetric charts, is that it gives the true bearing or compass bearing line between any two points.Accuracy is greatly improved.

Most of these charts are from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean.Of course Chen Haiyang knew the value of these charts, which were a huge fortune in the past.

"Can I go to Goa?"

"I'm on the Goa-Macau route. I've been to Madras as well."

"You are really a navigator." He said sincerely.Chen Haiyang is an explorer at heart and a lover of outdoor activities. After retiring from the army, he once crossed the Siguniang Mountains alone, and even sailed in the Qiongzhou Strait by himself.There is a great sense of sympathy for this kind of fellow.

(End of this chapter)