Kukri
Well-known member
The navigator was a chap named Albo and apparently his log survives.
I thought of the RIN historical section.
Any more ideas?
I thought of the RIN historical section.
Any more ideas?
A historian friend is looking for a help in analysing Magellan’s Navigation - any suggestions?
- Thread starter Kukri
- Start date
michael_w
Well-known member
Lisbon maritime museum? it's one of the best I've ever visited.
Roberto
Well-known member
Original document (in Spanish):
http://sevilla.2019-2022.org/wp-con...villa2019_Derrotero-de-Francisco-Albo-f15.pdf
http://sevilla.2019-2022.org/wp-con...villa2019_Derrotero-de-Francisco-Albo-f15.pdf
Poignard
Well-known member
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
capnsensible
Well-known member
Howabout a bit of controversy that put him well behind a Chinese fleet?
1421 The year the Chinese discovered the World. Fascinating ideas....
Gavin Menzies - Wikipedia
1421 The year the Chinese discovered the World. Fascinating ideas....
Gavin Menzies - Wikipedia
JumbleDuck
Well-known member
Fascinating, but unsupported speculation from someone who couldn't speak or read Chinese and claimed that Atlantis existed. File under "L" for "Loony".
capnsensible
Well-known member
What if he is right? ?
JumbleDuck
Well-known member
What if Erich von Daniken and Charles Berlitz were right? Fantasies can be entertaining, but there is no need to entertain the possibility of correctness.
capnsensible
Well-known member
What parts of Gavin Menzies book d you specifically disagree with?
JumbleDuck
Well-known member
Never read it. Don't waste my time on pseudohistory. What parts of it are you qualified to assess?
dankilb
Well-known member
I teach a bit about this - albeit from a humanities perspective (so not looking at the navigation per se). Never read the above book, although I remember the impact when it was published. Can't hurt to start a debate, at least?!
Last time I reviewed the English-language evidence (lightly - it's only for 1st year undergrads!), I get the impression that the consensus is that Zheng He and the Chinese fleets probably got as far as Africa (East coast) and the (South or even West) Pacific.
The argument generally put forward is that there were geopolitical and commercial reasons they didn't venture further (although that's always a convenient explanation). Our historically well-informed Chinese students seem to affirm this (and are unconvinced by the circumnavigation arguments).
Pretty impressive nevertheless.
Last time I reviewed the English-language evidence (lightly - it's only for 1st year undergrads!), I get the impression that the consensus is that Zheng He and the Chinese fleets probably got as far as Africa (East coast) and the (South or even West) Pacific.
The argument generally put forward is that there were geopolitical and commercial reasons they didn't venture further (although that's always a convenient explanation). Our historically well-informed Chinese students seem to affirm this (and are unconvinced by the circumnavigation arguments).
Pretty impressive nevertheless.
Kukri
Well-known member
Not going there, thanks. Even the Chinese don’t go for that one!
Kukri
Well-known member
What my friend particularly wants is an estimate of how accurate Francisco Albo’s estimates of his longitude were.
capnsensible
Well-known member
Ah, 'never read it'. I see......
dankilb
Well-known member
We need a navigation buff, with decent Spanish, and some grasp of the historic (navigation) context… shouldn’t actually be that hard to find, given the cosmopolitan nature of the forum.
And even without being/having any of the above - and armed only with Google Translate - it certainly looks like fascinating stuff (notes on sea bed, soundings, weather, coastlines, rivers etc.).
What there didn’t seem to be much of was ‘workings’ for navigational/astronomical calculations. Not that I’d really know what I was looking for/at.
…a separate log or set of notebooks perhaps?
dankilb
Well-known member
(I say the above having been under the impression that they didn’t really know how to calculate/keep longitude in those days - but that’s only from the best-sellery book from a few years ago… I really should learn more about this stuff, being a geography lecturer and a yachtsman!)
Gary Fox
N/A
To read every crackpot book in the world would take dozens of lifetimes, assuming you could read quicker than they are churned out; and they would still be whackadoodle clickbait nonsense. 'Never read it' is a respectable position to hold.
I would love to know how close Albo got with his longitudes, it's a fascinating subject and there is already a minor canon of work.
Unless my memory's at fault, didn't Sir Robin K-J try a transat with a cross-staff type thing instead of a sextant?
Gary Fox
N/A
Do we know details of the instuments he had on board?
Mark-1
Well-known member
Has it been debunked then? I read it when it came out and a lot of it sounded like a slam dunk to me (and I'm a confirmed skeptic) . There were bits that were obviously nonsense. One bit that sticks in my mind as being nonsense was where he adjusted their track to 'correct' the longitudes which they wouldn't have known. Of course if you take any line going north south and change the longitudes to fit the known coast you errrrr, get a line that fits the known coast!
EDIT: I've Googled. It seems to be the bit that's considered bollocks is the America bit. It's a long while since I read the book but my recollection is he was far from emphatic about that. Certainly I came away with the impression it was a plausible theory waiting for evidence. Not that he was saying it 100pc happened. Pretty sure the rest of it was pretty mainstream. Maybe my memory is flawed, of course. If people don't like that they're really gonna hate ancient history. People writing 500 page books when all the evidence is half a page of Tacitus always makes my chuckle.
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Mark-1
Well-known member
Most importantly, what anchor?