How did they navigate on wooden sailing ships?

by thetwistedspleen

Just wondering really, i don't understand how you can navigate the ocean without GPS or SatNav, much less when you don't even have an accurate map of the world.

jschooltiger

I've written about this a couple times before -- this is probably the most pertinent answer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3qw247/its_1785_im_the_captain_of_a_british_frigate_in/

and I expanded that here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9led7f/how_did_ships_determine_their_position_on_the/

u/b1uepenguin has also written quite a bit about navigation in Polynesia, which is quite interesting and relies on different techniques than those that grew out of the European milieu:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9e46y3/panel_ama_sailors_sailing_from_ancient_rome_to/e5mmkb8/