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© 2015,"If you want to know where you are, you need a good clock. The surprising connection between time and placeais explored ina Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There , the companion book to the National Air and Space Museum exhibition of the same name. Today we use smartphones and GPS, but navigating has not always been so easy. The oldest "clock" is Earth itself, and the oldest means of keeping time came from observing changes in the sky. Early mariners like the Vikings accomplished amazing feats of navigation without using clocks at all. Pioneering seafarers in the Age of Exploration used dead reckoning and celestial navigation; later innovations such as sextants and marine chronometers honed these techniques by measuring latitude and longitude. When explorers turned their sights to the skies, they built on what had been learned at sea. For example, Charles Lindbergh used a bubble sextant on his record-breaking flights. World War II led to the development of new flight technologies, notably radio navigation, since celestial navigation was not suited for all-weather military operations. These forms of navigation were extended and enhanced when explo -
© 1998,In the sixteenth century, Spain's control over its vast New World empire depended on the sailors and officers who manned the galleons and merchant vessels of its Atlantic fleets. In Spain's Men of the Sea, Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína paints a stunning portrait of daily life aboard the ships of the Spanish Main. With a novelist's eye for both detail and drama, Pérez-Mallaína evokes the golden age of seafaring in this thoroughly researched and generously illustrated account. Spain's Men of the Sea begins in Seville, the gateway to the New World. One of Europe's most cosmopolitan cities, Seville attracted people and goods from around the world. From Seville, Pérez-Mallaína follows the Spanish fleets to the West Indies ports of San Juan de Ulda, Veracruz, Cartagena, Nombre de Dios, Portobelo, and Havana. He profiles the men and boys who went to sea-from the scions of seafaring dynasties and fugitives from justice to the orphans and destitute children apprenticed into service as cabin boys. Some signed on because of family tradition, more signed on because of the lure of New World treasure or simply to obtain free passage to the Americas. Most sailors were poorly paid, but the more enterprising among them supplemented their meager wages by small-scale trade or smuggling. Pérez-Mallaína also describes relations among the ship owners, officers, and crews, and traces the intervention of the Spanish government in disputes over pay and cases of insubordination and mistreatment. Pérez-Mallaína paints a bleak picture of life at sea and its physical and mental effect on seamen and passengers alike. The seafaring life was defined by cramped quarters, abominable food, seasickness, vermin infestation, and disease. More frightening still was the threat of shipwreck and assault by corsairs and pirates that accompanied all sea voyages. Not surprisingly, most sailors were highly superstitious, and Pérez-Mallaína closes his vivid study with an exploration of their unorthodox religious beliefs, which combined Christian and pagan elements. A significant contribution to maritime history, Spain's Men of the Sea also succeeds as a compelling tale of everyday life and death in the maritime community. "Pérez-Mallaína writes well and has an engaging sense of humor. The work is richly illustrated, and the illustrations, including many color plates, are well chosen... This book should appeal to all aficionados of the romance of the sea as well as to specialists in Spanish and Latin American colonial history."-Benjamin Keen, author of A History of Latin America