Day 3: Eb and Flow
The call of the ocean is something both terrifying and amazing. There’s a deep, visceral fear for many people when they think about the deep blue. But the inner thrive to look for the beyond, past the horizon has also inspired and pushed humanity to new frontiers since the dawn of our species. Let’s dive in together and see what we can uncover.
Getting our sealegs
When we think about sailing these days we have a lot of technology floating around. From yachts to jetskis, and from aircraft carriers to rowboats, there’s a seemingly endless variation of vessels. The waterscooter however was only invented in the 1950, and even though it’s quite fun to imagine early humans zooming across the waves on jetskis, we have to go back a little further to find out where it all began. So we know that Australia has been inhabited by humans for at least 50.000 years, and we also know that the only way for humans to get to Australia from South East Asia had to have been by boat. Were these thé earliest sailors though? Probably not, but it’s hard to say where exactly it all began. Very little evidence remains from those times. The oldest imagery of humans using boats is also the oldest physical evidence we have for sailing at all, and it’s a lot younger that 50.000 year. It’s a depiction of a watercraft carved into rock at Valle, Norway. It’s between 12.000 and 13.000 years old, not bad at all! But the oldest remains of an actual watercraft are younger than that. At a modest 10.000 tot 9.500 years old, the Pesse canoe resides in the Drents Museum in the Netherlands.
Hast seen the white whale?
Sometimes it’s great to just go from a to be without having to bring a change of clothing, but there have been moments in history where bridges were deliberately destroyed to make it impossible for advancing enemies to cross rivers. During the second world war German troops invaded the Netherlands from the east. To advance further west they had to cross rivers, notably the Waal river by Nijmegen. To slow down the German advance the Dutch engineers decided to deliberately destroy the bridge over the river to ensure the Germans couldn’t advance. This wouldn’t be the only time bridges formed crucial chokepoints during times of war. Throughout the ages gaining or losing control over a bridge could mean the difference between winning or losing a battle. This is why even today pontoon bridges are such a crucial part of a military’s arsenal. Being able to cross bridges both to advance soldiers, and to ensure the safety and transport of civilians and goods is of the utmost importance in times of crisis.
Wanna trade?
The see has inspired a great many myths and monsters. We’re all familiar with Moby Dick, Sirens, the Kraken, and the Leviathan, and it shouldn’t surprise us that the ocean is such a deep (get it?) source of inspiration. Let’s face it, anything could be down there, right? When you’re sailing on open ocean you can’t see very deep under the surface at all, so between the thin sliver of surface water and the bottom of the ocean are quite literally kilometers of ocean where anything could be found. The phrase “Here be dragons” and old depictions of monsters on maps were, in those times, meant to warn against the unknown. All they knew for sure back then is that it was quite common for ships to just disappear. And the handful of times an animal bigger than a large fish washed up on shore, like a whale, you’d be pretty sure you saw something as close as you can get to an actual dragon, or monster. The giant squids, blue whales, and great whites of the ocean are very real and are scary enough today with all the information we have about them. Centuries ago these kinds of sightings were turned into myths and sea tales that were passed on from generation to generation.
Whatever floats your boat
The sea isn’t all bad though, it didn’t take long for humanity to figure out that it can be quite efficient and profitable to transport stuff over water. Two main advantages are cost effectiveness, and (relative) travel ease. Over the years we have become better and better at building boats, but due to the buoyancy of watercrafts you can transport a lot more material over water than over land. Just try to imagine how many trucks you would need to transport all the container on an average container ship. And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that on land, no matter if it’s by road or by rail, you will need to actually have a road or railway connection to wherever you need to go. Over water, as long as point A and point B are both connected by water, you’re good to go. This is, of course, not mentioning the fact that you do still need ports, but in general water really is the way to go when it comes to transporting large quantities over vast distances. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that roughly 80% of all international trade is maritime trade.
Riding the waves
So we established that maritime trade is important, and that humanity has been sailing for a long time, but how do they do it? For seasoned sailors it’s probably child’s play to find your bearings out at sea, but I for one can’t imagine having any idea of where you are when all around you is just water. How does navigation work, and how has this developed over the ages? The Polynesians were some of the best seafarers the world has ever seen, being able to traverse thousands of kilometers of open ocean as early as 4.000BC. They left from Taiwan towards Indonesia and the Philippines, among others, and eventually made it as far as Tonga and Samoa, an incredible achievement! They used the stars to navigate, using celestial bodies as their bearings on the open sea, as well as observing seabirds and the ocean currents to determine the vicinity of land. The early European seafarers also used celestial navigation, and this would remain the main way of finding your direction for a very long time. An important addition to the navigator’s toolbelt was the compass and the quadrant, but the quadrant was still a tool that made celestial navigation easier. Even way into the 1700s, when the sextant was developed celestial navigation was still the major way to navigate. It wasn’t until 1825 that the Royal Navy started supplying their ships with a more modern navigation device, the chronometer.
Wrapping up
The ocean is very, very deep, and there’s a lot of it. And a lot of what is inside of it is scary, and it’s really difficult to cross. Hmm.. maybe it’s nice to just look at it from a distance, see the waves crash on the shore, and call it a day.