Wednesday March 14th 2012, Royal Western Yacht Club; Jeremy Batch; The Story of Navigation: 2000 BC to 2020 AD. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated salmon do it – and all with a precision that we have only just begun to match. The contributions to navigation made by Galileo and John Harrison are well-known, and the work of others – such as Michael Faraday and Elmer Sperry – can at least be guessed at. But what about Igor Sikorsky, Arthur C. Clarke and Albert Einstein? If the back-staff was such an improvement over the cross-staff, why did the Dutch East India Company ban it from their ships? How did Deptford Sailing Club (estab.1514) get put in charge of pilotage and buoyage, and why did their successors finally settle on red and green, which many of us can’t distinguish? How did the nuclear submarine USS Skate find Ice Station Alpha in 1959, when the “station” had no idea where it was? Which prehistoric navigational device played a vital part in the moon landings? Why did the astronauts come back younger than if they’d stayed at home, and how does this affect your satnav? And how did the Polynesians and the Vikings find their way around, centuries before GPS?
Jeremy is a boater and sailor, going narrow boating and motor boating on the inland waterways and sailing mainly in the Thames Estuary in his 24ft sailing cruiser. He is a lock keeper at Limehouse Lock where the Regent’s Canal and the Lee Navigation meet the Thames, the CA’s headquarters in Limehouse Basin. Jeremy’s interest in the history of London’s docks and waterways began when he was writing in the Greenwich YC magazine and has increased since he started to work in London as a lock keeper and joined the CA.
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