Old Salts Tales

alan006 · #1 27-06-09, 13:56

I was talking to an old boy who many years ago sailed on Thames Sailing barges. He was telling me a couple of tricks they used to help them navigate in the days before modern aids.
When tacking up a creek in fog they had a bucket of pebbles and a catapult. By catapulting a pebble and listening for the splash they could tell when the splashes stopped it was time to tack.
Another trick in fog was if a seabird was on a buoy and you knew the next buoy was nearby then as you passed the buoy by making a lot of noise the bird would fly off to the next one. So you just followed it. I asked him why didn't they use the compass and he said the glass was so fogged up it was barely readable.
I don't know if he was pulling my leg or if anyone else has heard of old tricks for navigating before we got our modern aids. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

jhr · #2 27-06-09, 17:13

Fishermen working off Chesil Beach could apparently locate their position in fog by examining the size of the pebbles on the beach - the smaller the pebbles, the further west their position.

Supposedly....

Small_Hillyard · #3 28-06-09, 13:50

The catapult and pebbles 'radar' crops up in Neil Munro's the Tales of Para Handy.

alan006 · #4 28-06-09, 18:27

Its some years since I read the Para Handy stories, but they have aged well and are still very amusing.

DanTribe · #5 30-06-09, 15:09

From JDS's Old Harry Tales.

Old Harry reckoned he could arm his lead with lard and tell where he was by the different taste of the seabed around the Thames Estuary.
All went well until the day he followed the sewage barge out!