How Do We Find Direction In The Sea ?

In the beginning, when man made boats, he also used them for the sea travel. But he did not dare to travel too far because of the fear of losing his way as he did not have any instrument to find the directions in the sea. During those days, the sea travelers used to take the help of the sun and the stars to find different directions. But when the sun and the starts were not visible in the cloudy weather, find the right directions was very difficult.

About one thousand years B.C., a black stone with peculiar properties was discovered at Magnesia in Asia Minor. It used to attract small iron pieces. This stone was named as ‘magnet’. It was also observed that a freely suspended magnet always points towards the north and south. It is because the earth itself is a big magnet and as such attracts the poles of the magnet. The Chinese navigators utilized this property to the natural magnet, around the year 1300, to know about the directions in the sea. This is how the first ‘compass’ of the world was made.

In the primitive compasses a cork or a piece of wood used to be floated in a water bowl and a piece of the magnetic stone placed on it. The ends of the stone always pointed towards the north-south directions and thus helped in finding the directions.

With the progress of the science, man has developed artificial methods to make magnets of iron and steel which are being utilized in developing many kinds of magnetic compasses.

The modern compasses consist of a small non-metallic box with a thick paper dial. The paper is divided into four right angles, N.S.W. and E representing north, south, west and east directions are marked on it. Each quarter of the circle is further divided into eight equal needles is pivoted which freely rotates in a horizontal direction. It is covered with a glass plate. The magnet pointing in the north-south direction helps the navigators to determine the directions in which the ship is sailing.

In many big ships now a days another kind of instrument named ‘gyrocompass’ is also used. It is also used in aero planes to determine the direction.