Ancient with a dash of modern: We joined the Royal Navy to find there's little new in naval navigation The art of not driving your warship into the coast or the seabed is a curious blend of the ancient and the very modern, as The Reg discovered while observing the Royal Navy's Fleet Navigating Officers' (FNO) course. Held aboard HMS Severn, "sea week" of the FNO course involves taking students fresh from classroom training and …
"Listening to friends and neighbors... some wouldn't have a clue how to go from point "A" to point "B" here in town without their GPS."
I remember when my brother-in-law first bought a GPS unit. It was the days before they included maps, at least on "within reach of an interested consumer" devices. I suspect few people would find much use for a GPS receiver that did little other than show the current GPS coordinates. I suspect that's why what left-pondians call a GPS, we right-pondians call a SatNav. Two very different beasts with orders of magnitude between their usability levels.
Sounds like good engineering practice. The biggest mistake we make in modern systems development and deployment is to go straight from concept to implementation, omitting the planning.
There's an old Russian proverb - "measure seven times, cut once".
We have had; HMS Nottingham ran aground in 2002 on a well known and charted rock because people weren't doing more execution than planning and hadn't done things such as marking the charts properly for navigation obstacles, according to the court martial summary which was FOI'd.
This shows that particular issue has been well and truly plugged by both technology replacing paper charts and showing hazards to the ship, and via training.
However RN ships always have a full set of old-fashioned paper charts on board that are kept up to date with the latest navigation issues. Technology *can* go wrong, and when it does you want to revert back to tried-and-trusted methods of navigation used for centuries.
I known a fair number of RN officers due to the work that I am currently doing, and one thing I've always noticed is the unassuming way they go about tasks that, when you think about it, are actually incredibly difficult to get right. Its a factor of the depth of training that RN officers go through in order to qualify for their roles; another example is the "Perisher" sub commander course that is renowned for being total evil but produces sub commanders who absolutely know their stuff (the USN apparently copied the course but could find no way of improving it or making it tougher).
The RN collectively also keeps the "old ways" alive; not because they are inherently conservative, but because they are very aware that if a crisis occurs all of the complex technology that we surround ourselves with may simply stop working. Bearing taken by hand and using a sextant will still allow you to work out where you are, even if GPS has fallen completely silent!
Raising my glass to the Senior Service out of respect.
I think that technically they have 4, all in museums. 1 at RAF Museum Cosford under restoration so not on display, and 3 at RAF Museum Hendon where one is undercover and 2 outside gradually crumbling away due to lack of care. The boats were retired into civilian hands for target towing purposes in 1986 and sea rescue taken over completely by helicopters.
Coming from Orkney, I have been aware of its tide races, skerries and other navigational hazards for many decades.
A story I heard from an elderly relative was how not every RN vessel believed in all those items. Between the mainland of Orkney and the island of Rousay, there is a narrowing channel (I think it has an island in the middle). The effect of this narrowing is a standing wave every time the tide changes. I understand it is generally over 1m high but can be well over 2.
There was a RN vessel at Kirkwall on the north of the island but it needed to get back to Scapa Flow in a hurry and someone decided to ignore the markings on the chart identifying this as a bad idea! The story was that this, not very big, vessel had plenty of depth below when it hit the wave (is there a word for them?) and came to a complete halt. It apparently limped back to Kirkwall and was towed the long way to the (now long gone) naval base in Scapa Flow.
The story did not include what happened to the captain & navigator!
El Reg did a great article on a trip on HMS Enterprise a few years ago. Which was very good, as was this one. I approve of boatnotes.
Anyway in the comments was a plug for a podcast called Omega Tau. Which is a very geeky science, engineering and aviation podcast. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to plug that in general.
But also there's a specific episode where he went on HMS Enterprise for a week. And the podcast is something stupid like 3-4 hours long. Made up of several different bits. Including about an hour of interviews with the navigator, on how they navigate. And the amount of planning he had to do for a port visit - where the Navy will take on local pilots but they aren't allowed to drive the ship, only to advise. The navigator said that Navy rules didn't allow him to use GPS while docking, so that he would always be current with his skills if he had to operate in a GPS-denied environment.
So I'd recommend that. And in fact all his podcasts, not that I listen to the ones in German, but I'm sure they're also great.
In one section he interviews the navigator at night. while he's on watch on the bridge. An alarm goes off. Don't worry, that's the auto alarm on the radar to tell me about a ship I'd already noticed. Then the navigator asks one of the lookouts to disable the alarm. "It's on the console on the starboard side. No! Your other starboard!" I reckon they use left and right like the rest of us, if nobody's watching...
The person he’s talking to might be cross lateral like my daughter. She has no innate sense of left or right, is not handed in any way. She writes right handed simply because she was taught to.
Sample driving conversation from recently, she is navigating: not that left, the other left!
I've read quite a few articles on the Register now about how the English Navy uses IT on its boats.
There are other applications of IT which might be worth investigating. Consider the complexity of a modern brewery or even a pub. There are some in Ireland which use online ordering and drone delivery of pints. There are probably navigational challenges there too, as well as meteorological.
Widen your horizons.
Several years ago, they made a big deal about no longer teaching sextant use, now that we have modern satellite navigation and computers, no need for that silly old stuff.
It was quietly brought back and is again being taught. Forewarned is forearmed, or something like that.
"Be Prepared" isn't just for the Scouts.
I think that the coastal yachtmaster just needs 'awareness off' - while the ocean requires use and care of a sextant.
It is trickey, but doable, if you have the tables and a list of the steps to hand.
The beauty of the sextant navigation, along with Line, and compass chart and a 2B pencil is that they will get you anywhere
I liked the image of the Portland speed gauge- it brought me back. We teach how to use that with the Sea Cadets still.
You probably don’t go there. Or if you do, it isn’t covertly, so you can use active sonar. Because you’re there to do amphibious stuff and/or mine clearance. Just blowing stuff up would be done from over the horizon.
Different for subs though. Which I understand can get rather more hairy. I guess you get an idea of where the channels are by where the enemy ships go. And you’re more likely to be sticking your nose in places you really shouldn’t.
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