Ahoy Mates
Here I am again, this time in the Middle Ages or Medieval Period. I’ve heard some refer to this time period as the Dark Ages but your professor tells me that you understand that it wasn’t really a dark period. After spending several hundred years sailing in the Mediterranean, I decided it was time for a change of scenery. I had heard of a land far to the east that sounded fascinating to me called China. I decided that I was going to travel there and spend some time getting to know a new culture. Upon arriving in the Far East, I was shocked to see a culture surprisingly different from that of my own. These people were not backwards or unintelligent, which I suspected they might be. In fact they were quite advanced. By the time I arrived in 1000 C.E. during the Song Dynasty, they already had a method of producing books using blocks instead of writing them by hand and they were using gunpowder (Sivin, 165). In 1000 I was among the only Europeans in China along with a handful of military or political envoys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europeans_in_Medieval_China). This was one of the reasons that I decided to move to China, I needed a change of scenery both in landscape and citizens. When I arrived in China my first task was to find a ship that I could serve on. After sailing in the Mediterranean I had experience using celestial navigation so I was able to find a position as a navigator fairly quickly on a vessel called a junk. I thought I would like to sail on a junk because it was among the first merchant ships capable of going out to sea. The Junk was used during the Song Dynasty as both a merchant ship and for maritime warfare. I had grown tired of fighting by the time I arrived in China and was looking for another path. I felt that sailing on a merchant ship would allow me to travel to distant shores and see the luxuries that were being traded (Hadingham). Although we used the stars to navigate there was a new technique that enables us to sail further without getting lost that was being developed.  Song Dynasty Junk, Public Domain Image, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SongJunk.jpg viewed originally at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship) For centuries landlubbers had been using a device called
a magnet to orient buildings and bury their loved ones in the proper
direction. It was called a south-pointer and was made of a metal spoon
shaped device made of lodestone or magnetite. This pointer was placed
on a cast bronze plate making it very heavy (Silverman). People on land
starting understanding that it could help them get their bearings on
land in the dark but the device was still too heavy and unstable for use at sea, on a rocking ship.
(Temple 155)
 Chinese South-Pointer from Around 200 A.D. reproduced from Smith College History of Science Museum of Ancient Inventions http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html by Susan Silverman By 700 C.E. the Chinese had learned how to magnetize iron needles
by heating them or rubbing them with magnetite. Still it wasn’t until
shortly after I arrived in China in 1000 that we learned to put these
needles in water allowing us to use them for navigation. Once we
mastered the art of using the compass for navigation we didn’t have to
rely on the stars to tell us or direction anymore making travel at sea
much safer (Silverman). It was fortunate for me that the compass did
not completely eliminate the need for skilled navigators for if it did
I may have been forced onto the deck to load and unload cargo. Even
with the compass to help us with direction it was still necessary to
use the stars to determine our latitude and we still had to attempt to
figure out our speed, although there was no good method that we could
use to do so.
The magnetic compass was a huge help to sailors like me out to sea. We had the stars to point us in the right direction and in the past relied on landmarks to help us navigate. As we desired to travel further from our home we could no longer rely on landmarks and were forced to rely solely on the stars. Using the stars worked fine until the clouds covered them. Being at sea on a starless night was much like being in a windowless dark room. Imagine being in your house in the dark with now way of knowing which direction you are facing. It does you no good to know where everything is on a map if you don’t know where you are headed. The compass allowed us to know which direction we were traveling but not where we were. It was still important to use the stars and charts to tell us our location but the compass allowed us to determine our direction more effectively than in the past making sea travel far safer. The compass had many limitations but was superior to anything available at the time. If we could only figure out a way to measure our speed….. Bibliography "Europeans in Medieval China." Wikipedia. 10 Nov 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europeans_in_Medieval_China>. Hadingham, Evan. "Ancient Chinese Explorers." NOVA online April 2003 10 Nov 2008 Silverman, Susan. "Compass, China, 220 BCE." Museum of Ancient Inventions. 1998. Smith College. 28 Oct 2008 <http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html>. Sivin, Nathan. Science in Ancient China Research and Reflections. Aldershot, Hampshire: VARIORUM, 1995. Temple, Robert. The Genius of China: 3000 years of science, discovery and invention. Prion, UK, 1986. Secondary Source Note For my secondary source I chose to use a web page written by Susan Silverman from the Smith College History of Science Museum of Ancient Inventions. Ms. Silverman appears to have a wealth of information about the subject and appears on a website that seems to have some authority. Based on these observations I think that this secondary source meets requirements 1, 2 and 3 Primary Source note For my primary source in this episode I had to use a direct translation contained in a book. The book is written by Robert Temple and contains a translation, on page 155, of Tseng Kung-Liang Compendium of Important Military Techniques from 1044 AD. This passage refers to the use of a compass on land for military use. Temple also translates Zhu Yu Table Talks, on page 150 which contains the first mention of the compass for maritime navigational purposes. Image Notes Song Dynasty Junk, Public Domain Image, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SongJunk.jpg viewed originally at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship) Chinese South-Pointer from Around 200 A.D. reproduced from Smith College History of Science Museum of Ancient Inventions http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html by Susan Silverman |
