How is compass useful to us in ocean useful to the loss in ocean
Answers
Since its first documented use by the Chinese centuries ago, the magnetic compass has guided countless sailors safely across the seas. Though the compass allowed for the advent of modern navigation, early versions could often be wildly imprecise, giving a false sense of security to seafarers and leading to disastrous consequences.
The device’s rocky evolution is charted with an enthusiast’s passion in “Compass” by British yacht designer, writer and photographer Alan Gurney, who chronicles the instrument’s history from the discovery of the lodestone’s magnetic properties to the development of global positioning systems, with a focus on the British role in compass development.
It is a fascinating adventure, marked by folly, ingenuity, epic shipwrecks and the loss of innumerable lives. The compass was considered so precious to northern seamen of the 16th century, Gurney tells us, “that any man found tampering with the compass or its magnetizing lodestone had his hand, by law, pinned to the mast with a dagger, the even more painful result being a split palm as the offender, to gain freedom, dragged his hand down against the blade.”