How ships find their way out to sea. What devices in the past helped ships sail? Astronomy location of navigators by stars

Since the ships - the creations of human hands - began to surf the seas and oceans, navigators faced the task of determining their own location. Huge waves, squalls and the need to maneuver the tacks, keeping the course against the wind, complicated multi-day voyages, and the old-time sailors lacked only a compass. Today, when positioning of a ship is done automatically thanks to GLONASS, it is difficult to imagine the position of a captain who has at his disposal only simple devices for orienting by the stars. Nevertheless, even today, graduates of specialized secondary and higher specialized educational institutions own all these devices.

Basic Marine Location Methods

The two-coordinate determination of the vessel in (location) is carried out by seven types of methods, including:

• The oldest is visual.
• Later, but not much - astronomical.
• Topographic-computational, that is, a method of plotting the full path of the vessel on a map, indicating the points of course change and calculating the distance traveled by multiplying speed by time. Invented at about the same time as the astronomical method, and often used in conjunction with the previous two. Today, automatic calculators do the routine work;
• Radar, which allows you to combine the picture on the radar screen with the sea chart.
• Radio bearing. Available in cases where there are signal sources on the shore.
• Radio navigation, using means of communication, through which the navigator receives the information he needs.
• Satellite navigation method.

All methods, except for the first three, were the result of the technological revolution that took place in the 20th century. They would not have been possible without the discoveries and inventions made by mankind in the field of radio engineering, electronics, cybernetics and a breakthrough in the space sector. Now it is not difficult to calculate the point in the ocean where the ship is located, determining its coordinates takes a matter of seconds, and, as a rule, they are tracked continuously. Approximately the same technologies are used in aviation navigation and even in such a “mundane” area as driving a car.

Latitude

As you know, the earth is not flat, it has the shape of a somewhat flattened ball. It would seem that points on a three-dimensional figure should be described by three Euclidean coordinates, but two are enough for geographers and navigators. In order to make a topographic determination of the vessel, you need to name only two numbers, accompanied by the words "northern" (or "south") latitude (abbreviated as N or S) and western or "eastern" longitude (otherwise - z. d. or w.d.). These values ​​are measured in degrees. Everything is very simple. Latitudes are calculated from the equator (0°) to the poles (90°), indicating in which direction: if closer to Antarctica, then the southern latitude is indicated, and if towards the Arctic, then the northern latitude. Points of the same latitude form circles called parallels. Each of them has a different diameter - from the largest at the equator (about 40 thousand kilometers) to zero at the pole.

Longitude and measures of length

Determination of the ship's position is impossible by one coordinate, so there is a second one. Longitude is a conditional number of the meridian indicating, again, the side in which the countdown is being conducted. The circle is divided into 360 °, its two halves, respectively, are equal to 180. The Greenwich meridian passing through the famous British observatory is considered zero. On the other side of the planet is its antipode - the 180th. Both of these coordinates (0° and 180°) are indicated without the name of the direction of longitude.

In addition to degrees, there are also minutes - they indicate the position of objects with 60 times greater accuracy. Since all meridians are of equal length, it was they who became the measure of length for sailors. One corresponds to one minute of any meridian and is equal to 1.852 km. The metric system was introduced much later, so ship navigators use the good old English mile. Units such as cables are also applicable - it is equal to 1/10 of a mile. What is surprising, because before the British more often counted in dozens than in tens.

visual way

As the name implies, the method is based on what the navigator and captain, as well as other team members on deck or gear, see. Previously, in the days of sailing fleets, there was a forward looking position, the post of this sailor was located at the very top, in a specially fenced off place of the main mast - a closet. From there it was better to see. Determining the position of a vessel by coastal objects is similar to the simplest method of a pedestrian who knows what he needs, for example, a house on Staroportofrankivska Street at number 12, and for accuracy there is another search criterion - a pharmacy located opposite. For sailors, however, other objects serve as landmarks: lighthouses, mountains, islands, or any other noticeable details of the landscape, but the principle is the same. You need to measure two or more azimuths (this is the angle between the compass needle and the direction to the landmark), put them on the map and get your coordinates at the point of their intersection. Of course, such a vessel, or rather its location, is applicable only in the zone of coastal visibility, and then in clear weather. In the fog, you can navigate by the sound of the lighthouse siren, and in the absence of surface signs, turn to the shoals in shallow water, measuring the depth with a lot.

Astronomy in maritime service

The most romantic location method. Around the 18th century, sailors, together with astronomers, invented a sextant (sometimes called a sextant, that's also correct) - a device with which you can make a fairly accurate two-coordinate determination of the vessel by the position of the stars in the sky. At first glance, its device is complicated, but in fact, you can learn how to use it quite quickly. It has an optical system in its design, which should be aimed at the Sun or any star, having previously installed the device strictly horizontally. For precise pointing, two mirrors (large and small) are provided, and the angular elevation of the luminary is determined by the scales. The direction of the device is set by the compass.

The creators of the device took into account the centuries-old experience of ancient navigators who focused only on the light of the stars, moon and sun, but created a system that simplifies both navigation training and the location process itself.

calculation

Knowing the coordinates of the starting point (port of exit), the time of movement and speed, it is possible to plot the entire trajectory on the map, noting when and by how many degrees the course was changed. This method could be ideal when the direction and speed are independent of current and wind. The unevenness of the course and the errors of the lag indicator also affect the accuracy of the obtained coordinates. The navigator has at his disposal a special ruler for laying parallel lines on the map. The determination of the maneuvering elements of a sea vessel is carried out using a compass. Usually, at the point of change of direction, the true position is determined using other available methods, and since it, as a rule, does not coincide with the calculated one, a kind of squiggle is drawn between the two points, remotely resembling a snail and called "discrepancy".

Currently, most ships are equipped with automatic calculators, which, taking into account the input speed and direction, perform integration over the time variable.

Using radar

Now there are no white spots left on the sea charts, and an experienced navigator, seeing the outlines of the coast, can immediately tell where the watercraft entrusted to his care is located. For example, having noticed the light of a lighthouse on the horizon even in the fog and hearing the muffled sound of its siren, he will immediately say something like: “We are on the traverse of the Vorontsovsky fire, the distance is two miles.” This means that the ship is at the indicated distance on a line connecting at right angles the course and the perpendicular direction to the lighthouse whose coordinates are known.

But it often happens that the coast is far away, and there are no visible landmarks. Earlier, in the days of the sailing fleet, the ship was “laid adrift”, collecting sails, sometimes, if the capricious nature of the dominant winds and the unpredictability of the bottom (reefs, shoals, etc.) were known, then they anchored and “waited in the sea for weather ", that is, clarification. Now there is no need for such a waste of time, and the navigator can see the coastline by looking at the locator screen. Determining a ship using radar is a simple task if you have qualifications. It is enough to combine the image on the navigation device and the map of the corresponding area, and everything will immediately become clear.

Direction finding and radio navigation method

There is such an amateur radio game - "Fox Hunting". With the help of home-made devices, its participants are looking for a "fox" hiding in the bushes or behind the trees - a player who has a working low-power radio station. In the same way, i.e. by bearing, the counterintelligence services identify the residents of foreign intelligence services (at least, this was the case before) at the moment they sent spy reports. Locating requires at least two directions intersecting at the location point, but more often than not. Since there are always some scatter in the readings, and it is impossible to achieve absolute accuracy, the bearings do not converge at one point, but form a kind of multilateral figure, in the geometric center of which one should assume one's location with a high degree of probability. Reference points can be pilot signals specially created on the coast (for example, on lighthouses) or radiation from radio stations, the coordinates of which are known (they are plotted on a map).

Coastal course correction using radio communications is also widely applicable.

By satellite

Today it is almost impossible to get lost in the ocean or the sea. The movement of moving objects at sea, in the air and on land is monitored by the Russian Cospas and the international Sarsat. They work on the Doppler principle. It is necessary to install a special radio beacon on the ship, but the safety and confidence in the successful outcome of the voyage are worth the money spent on it. Direction finders are located on geostationary satellites (“hanging” over a fixed point on the earth's surface) that make up the system. This service is provided free of charge and, in addition to the rescue function, performs a navigational search for the location of the vessel. The satellite navigation method gives the most accurate coordinates, its application does not cause difficulties, and navigators in our technological age use it most often.

Additional parameter - loading

The navigability of a vessel and its possible course are significantly affected by its draft. As a rule, the greater part of the body is immersed in water, the higher the level of its hydrodynamic resistance. There are, however, exceptions, for example, in nuclear submarines, the underwater course exceeds the surface, and a special nasal "bulb" in the event of its complete drowning creates the effect of better streamlining. One way or another, but the speed of movement (stroke) is affected by the mass of cargo (cargo) in holds or tanks. To assess this value, sailors use special marks with risks on the bow, stern and side parts of the hull (at least six scales). These signs are applied individually, each ship has its own, there is no single standard. The technique for determining the weight of cargo on board a ship, called "draft survey", is based on the use of "draft marks" and is used for many purposes, in particular navigation. The depth of the bottom does not always allow the ship to pass through a particular fairway, and the navigator must take this factor into account.

It remains only to wish at least those who go on a voyage.

In the other, it is important to choose the most profitable path and stick to it, constantly monitoring your location. This is where navigation helps people.

Ancient sailors tried to navigate near the coast and the location of the vessel was determined by coastal landmarks. The brave Phoenicians and Vikings, sailing far from the coast, were guided by the sun and stars. In the XI century. a compass appeared, but the magnetic needle at high latitudes did not point to the geographical north, but to the magnetic pole, which did not coincide with the north pole. This means that the higher the latitudes in which the ships sailed, the greater the error in the compass readings. The compass was far from a universal means of orientation. In the middle of the XVI century. the outstanding Flemish cartographer G. Mercator calculated the coordinates of the magnetic pole, proposed a new principle for compiling maps in a conformal cylindrical projection. Since then, all nautical charts have been compiled in this projection.

Currently, the direction of the vessel's movement is determined by a magnetic compass (taking into account magnetic declination) or by a gyrocompass. The gyrocompass is arranged according to the principle of a top and is rotated by an engine with a frequency of 300,000 revolutions per minute. Like any top, it has the property of maintaining a given position of the axis in space, for example, the direction from north to south.

When a ship is on the high seas, its course and distance traveled are constantly plotted on the map. Such accounting of the rate is called reckoning, and the rate is reckonable. The result of the navigator's work is called laying (the ship's course on the map).

Only close to the coast using a lighthouse or a direction finder (a device for determining the angular directions to external landmarks: coastal or floating objects, celestial bodies, etc.) can the navigator accurately name the ship's coordinates. It determines the direction to two landmarks, the position of which is known from the map. Lines are drawn from these landmarks on the map, and the point of their intersection will be the location of the vessel at sea.

Away from the coast, the navigator uses navigational instruments. Vessel speed and distance traveled are measured using a log. Logs are hydrodynamic and hydrostatic. A hydrodynamic lag is a turntable (screw) that is pulled on a cable behind the stern of the vessel. Usually the log is connected to a rev counter installed on the bottom of the vessel. The faster the ship goes, the faster the log rotates, and the counter shows a greater number of revolutions, and the value of the ship's speed is indicated on its dial.

The hydrostatic log perceives the force of water pressure. A tube is lowered into the water, bent at the end. The tube opening faces forward. The flow of water running on the ship creates pressure. The greater the speed, the greater the pressure. The pressure value is used to determine the speed of the vessel.

Measuring the ship's speed in knots is associated with the use of the first simple log, similar to a float. He was thrown from the ship on a rope, divided into parts by knots. The number of knots that “ran out” from the ship in half a minute corresponded to the number of nautical miles (1111.852 km) covered by the ship per hour.

However, the log does not give a very accurate idea of ​​the ship's speed, because it cannot take into account the speed and direction of currents, wind, and factors that affect the ship's drift. Sailors need not a reckonable, but a true course of the ship, so the reckonable course is corrected by astronomical observations using a sextant (or sextant) - a goniometric reflective instrument for measuring the heights of celestial bodies above the horizon or the angles between objects visible on the shore. The device of the sextant is as follows: a telescope and two mirrors are attached to the bronze sector, which is approximately 1/6 of the circle (the name of the device comes from the Latin word sextantis - “sixth”), and two mirrors (to reflect the rays of light from the heavenly body). The sector has divisions - degrees and minutes - for angular measurements.

When determining the location of a ship or aircraft by the sun or stars, a sextant usually measures the heights of several celestial bodies above the line of the visible horizon. Then a number of corrections are made to the result obtained, taking into account, for example, a decrease in the visible horizon, etc. Finally, corrections to denumerable coordinates are determined (most often graphically) using the formulas of nautical and aviation astronomy.

With the development of radio technology, radio communications came to the aid of ship navigation. Radio beacons, the location of which is precisely known, continuously send radio signals. They are received by a ship direction finder - a special radio receiver, with the help of which the bearing is determined - the angle between the meridian on which the ship is located and the direction to the source of radio waves. When determining the position of the vessel, the bearings of two radio stations (radio beacons) are taken into account.

In the interests of navigation, radar is also used (see Radar), which allows you to "see" in the dark and fog, determine the distance and bearing to the coast or to the ship with which you need to disperse at sea.

The location of the vessel can also be specified by the bottom topography shown on the map. For this, an ultrasonic device is used - an echo sounder (see Acoustics, acoustic technology). By measuring the time of passage of an ultrasonic pulse to the seabed and back, the device determines the depth, and the auto-recorder draws a depth curve - the bottom topography. The navigator compares the image on the map with the readings of echo sounders.

An important role is played by navigation technology in aviation, helping to drive aircraft. In front of the pilot on the dashboard, among the many different instruments, there are also navigational ones. This is an altimeter, the device of which is based on the same principles as a barometer that responds to pressure changes. The pressure decreases with altitude, and the navigator compares the pressure on the ground with the readings of the altimeter. So you can find out the approximate flight altitude. The true flight altitude is determined by a radio altimeter - a small radar. It sends radio pulses to the ground and receives them back. The speed of the radio wave is known - 300,000 km / s, and the device determines the flight altitude in time from the moment of sending and until the return of the pulse. The altitude meter is a manometer that measures the pressure of the oncoming air flow. With altitude, it decreases, and the device shows a lower speed. But the speed indicator automatically takes this change into account, and as a result, its arrow points to the true airspeed. The direction of flight can be judged by the readings of the gyrocompass.

Any navigator, both in antiquity and now, being on the high seas out of sight of the coast, first of all wants to know in which direction his ship is moving. The device by which you can determine the course of the ship is well known - it is a compass. According to most historians, the magnetic needle - the ancestor of the modern compass - appeared about three thousand years ago. Communication between peoples in those days was difficult, and until the wonderful direction indicator reached the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, many centuries passed. As a result, this invention came to Europe only at the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. and then spread widely.

Once in Europe, the device underwent a number of improvements and was called the compass, playing a huge role in the development of civilization. Only the magnetic compass gave people confidence in the sea, helped them overcome their fear of the ocean. Great geographical discoveries would be simply unthinkable without a compass.

History has not preserved the name of the inventor of the compass. And even the country that gave mankind this wonderful device, people of science cannot name it exactly. Some attribute his invention to the Phoenicians, others claim that the first who drew attention to the wonderful property of the magnet to be installed in the plane of the magnetic meridian were the Chinese, others prefer the Arabs, the fourth mention the French, Italians, Normans and even the ancient Mayans, the latter - on the basis that a magnetic rod was once found in Ecuador, which (with a fervent imagination) could be considered the prototype of a magnetic needle.

At first, the device for determining the countries of the world was very simple: a magnetic needle was stuck into a piece of cork and lowered into a cup of water, which later became known as the compass pot. Sometimes a piece of cane was taken instead of a cork, or a needle was simply inserted into a straw. Even this simple device brought invaluable convenience to sailors, it was possible to go to the open sea with it and not be afraid that you would not find your way back to your native shore. But the sailors wanted more. They vaguely felt that the wonderful floating needle, the accuracy of which was, of course, very low, had not yet revealed all its magnificent possibilities. Yes, and water often splashed out of the pot, it happened, even along with the arrow. Only in the 13th century did a compass appear with a dry kettle, and most importantly, with a card attached to the arrow. The card was a simple at first glance, but a truly remarkable invention: a small circle of non-magnetic material, together with a magnetic needle rigidly attached to it, is freely suspended on the tip of a vertical needle. From above, four main points were applied to the card: Nord, Ost, Zuyd and West, so that the Nord exactly coincided with the northern end of the arrow. The arcs between the main points were divided into several equal parts.

It seems to be nothing special? But before that, the old compass with a fixed card each time had to be turned in a horizontal plane until the northern end of the arrow coincided with the North. Only then it was possible to determine the course on which the ship was going. This, of course, was very inconvenient. But if the card itself rotated along with the arrow and itself was installed in the plane of the meridian, it was enough just to glance at it in order to determine any direction.

And yet, despite the improvements made, the compass remained a rather primitive device for a long time. In Russia in the 17th - early 18th centuries, it was most skillfully made by Pomors in the cities and villages of our North. It was a round box with a diameter of 4-5 centimeters made of walrus bone, which the Pomors kept at the waist in a leather bag. In the center of the box, on a bone hairpin, there was a card with magnetized metal arrows fixed from below. If the compass (or mark, as the Pomors called it) was not used, a blank cover was put on top of it. It is written about such a device in the Naval Charter of Peter I: “Compasses must be made with good craftsmanship and make sure that the needles on which the compass rotates are sharp and strong and would not break soon. Also, so that the wire (meaning the arrow. - V.D.) on the compass to the Nord and Zuyd was firmly rubbed with a magnet, so that the compass could be true, in which it is necessary to have a strong look, because the course and integrity of the ship depends on it.

Nowadays, the compass bowl is tightly closed with a thick glass lid, tightly pressed against it with a copper ring. From above, divisions from O to 360 ° are applied to the ring - clockwise from the Nord. Two black copper vertical wires are pulled inside the pot, so that one of them is exactly at 0 °, and the other is at 180 °. These wires are called course lines.

The compass on the ship is set so that the line drawn between the heading lines exactly coincides with the bow - middle of the stern line (or, as they say in the navy, with the diametrical plane of the ship).

About who exactly invented the compass with a rotating card, history also does not give an answer. True, there is a widespread version that in 1302 the Italian Flavio Joya (according to other sources, Zhioya) strengthened a card divided into 32 rumba on a magnetic needle, and placed the arrow on the tip of a hairpin. Grateful countrymen even erected a bronze monument to Joya in his homeland - in the city of Amalfi. But if someone really should erect a monument, it would be our compatriot Peter Peregrin. In his work "Message about magnets", dated 1269 and dedicated to the description of the properties of a magnet, contains reliable information about the improvement of the compass. This compass did not have a card. A magnetic needle was mounted on a vertical pin, and the azimuth circle on the top of the pot was divided into four parts, each of which had a breakdown in degrees from 0 to 90. objects and luminaries that are not high above the horizon. This sight was very similar to a modern direction finder, which still regularly serves the fleet.

It took about a century and a half before, after Peregrine, a new invention appeared that made it even easier to work with the compass.

The sea is very rarely calm, and any ship experiences rolling, and it, of course, negatively affects the operation of the compass. Sometimes the roughness of the sea is so strong that it completely disables the compass. Therefore, a need arose for a device that would allow the compass bowler to remain calm in any pitching.

Like most ingenious inventions, the new compass suspension was extremely simple. The bowler hat of the compass, somewhat weighted from below, was suspended on two horizontal half-axes resting on a ring. This ring, in turn, was attached to two horizontal half-axes, perpendicular to the first, and hung inside the second ring, fixed to the ship. Thus, no matter how steeply and often the ship tilted, and in any direction, the card always remained horizontal. By the name of the Italian mathematician D. Cardano, who proposed this wonderful device, the suspension was called cardan.

The Portuguese also proposed dividing the compass card into 32 points. They remained on the cards of marine compasses to our time. Each got its own name, and relatively recently, fifty years ago, one could find somewhere in the cockpit a sailor who was cramming a compass with shadows: “Nord Nord shadow Ost, Nord Nord Ost, Nord Ost shadow Ost, Nord Ost, Nord Ost shadow Zuyd" and so on. Shadow in this case in Russian means: to the side. Now, although all 32 rhumbs have remained on many modern compasses, divisions in degrees (and sometimes in fractions of a degree) have also been added to them. And in our time, telling the course that the helmsman must keep, they prefer to say, for example: “Course 327 °!” (instead of the former "Nord West shadow Nord", which is essentially the same thing - the difference of 1/4 ° is rounded off).

Since the magnetic compass received its modern design in the 19th century, it has improved very little. But on the other hand, the idea of ​​terrestrial magnetism and of magnetism in general has moved far ahead. This led to a number of new discoveries and inventions, which, if the compass itself does not concern, are directly related to navigation.

The more difficult were the tasks that fell on the military and merchant (commercial) fleets, the greater the requirements for compass readings were made by sailors. Observations became more accurate, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly for themselves, the sailors noticed that their main assistant, the compass, to which they had boundlessly trusted for so many centuries, very rarely gives correct readings. Any magnetic compass by two or three degrees, and sometimes much more, to put it mildly, is lying. We noticed that compass errors are not the same in different places on the Earth, that over the years they increase at some points, decrease at others, and that the closer to the pole, the greater these errors.

But at the beginning of the 19th century, science came to the aid of sailors and, by the middle of the 19th century, coped with this misfortune. The German scientist Karl Gauss created a general theory of terrestrial magnetism. Hundreds of thousands of accurate measurements have been made, and now on all navigation charts the deviation of the compass needle from the true meridian (the so-called declination) is indicated directly on the map with an accuracy of a quarter of a degree. It also indicates to which year the declination is given, the sign and magnitude of its annual change.

The work for navigators has increased - now it has become necessary to calculate the correction for the change in declination. This was true only for middle latitudes. In high latitudes, that is, in areas from 70 ° north and south latitudes to the poles, the magnetic compass could not be trusted at all. The fact is that in these latitudes there are very large anomalies of magnetic declination, since the proximity of magnetic poles, which do not coincide with geographical ones, affects. The magnetic needle tends to take a vertical position here. In this case, science does not help, and the compass lies without a twinge of conscience, and sometimes begins to completely change its readings. Not without reason, going to the North Pole by plane (1925), the famous Amundsen did not dare to trust the magnetic compass and came up with a special device, which was called the solar course indicator. In it, an accurate clock turned a small mirror after the sun, and while the plane was flying above the clouds without deviating from the course, the "bunny" did not change its position.

But the misadventures of the magnetic compass did not end there. Shipbuilding developed rapidly. At the beginning of the 19th century, steamboats appeared, followed by metal ships. Iron ships quickly began to displace wooden ones, and suddenly ... One after another, under mysterious circumstances, several large steamships sank. Analyzing the circumstances of the crash of one of them, which killed about 300 people, experts found that the cause of the accident was incorrect readings of magnetic compasses.

Scientists and navigators gathered in England to figure out what is happening here. And they came to the conclusion that the ship's iron affects the compass so much that errors in its readings are simply inevitable. Doctor of theology Scoresby, who was once a famous captain, who spoke at this meeting, showed by experience to those present the effect of iron on the magnetic compass needle and concluded: the greater the mass of iron, the more it deflects the compass needle from the meridian. “We,” said Scoresby, “are sailing in the old fashioned way, as on wooden ships, that is, without taking into account the influence of ship iron on the compass. I am afraid that it will never be possible to achieve the correct compass readings on a steel ship ... ”The deviation of the magnetic compass needle under the influence of ship iron was called deviation.

Opponents of iron shipbuilding cheered up. But this time, too, science came to the aid of the magnetic compass. Scientists have found a way to minimize this deviation by placing special destroyer magnets next to the magnetic compass. The palm in this, of course, belongs to Captain Matthew Flinders, after whom the first exterminator, the flindersbar, is named. They began to be placed in binnacles next to the compass bowler.

Previously, a binnacle was called a wooden box, in which a compass was placed at night along with a lantern. English sailors called it that: night house - night house. Nowadays, a binnacle is a wooden four- or six-sided cabinet on which a compass bowl is mounted. To his left and right on the binnacle are massive iron balls the size of small melons. They can be moved and fixed closer and further away from the compass. Hidden inside the locker is a whole set of magnets that can also be moved and fixed. Changing the relative position of these balls and magnets almost completely eliminates the deviation.

Now, before leaving for the voyage, when the cargo has already been loaded and secured, a deviator rises on the ship and in a specially designated area of ​​​​the sea, on the move, destroys the deviation for an hour and a half. At his command, the ship moves in different courses, and the deviator moves the balls and magnets, reducing the influence of the ship's iron on the compass readings. Leaving the ship, he leaves a small table of residual deviation, which the navigators have to take into account every time the ship changes course, as a correction for deviation. Let us recall Jules Verne's novel The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain, where the scoundrel Negoro planted an ax under the compass binnacle, dramatically changing its readings. As a result, the ship sailed to Africa instead of America.

The need to periodically destroy and determine the residual deviation made us think about the problem of creating a non-magnetic compass. By the beginning of the 20th century, the properties of the gyroscope were well studied, and a gyroscopic compass was designed on this basis. The principle of operation of the gyrocompass, created by the German scientist Anschütz, is that the axis of a rapidly rotating top retains its position in space unchanged and can be set along the north-south line. Modern gyrocompasses are enclosed in a hermetically sealed sphere (hydrosphere), which, in turn, is placed in an external case. The hydrosphere floats in suspension in a liquid. Its position is regulated by means of an electromagnetic blast coil. The electric motor brings the speed of rotation of the gyroscopes up to 20 thousand revolutions per minute.

To ensure comfortable working conditions, the gyrocompass (the main instrument) is placed in the quietest place of the ship (closer to its center of gravity). With the help of electrical cables, the gyrocompass readings are transmitted to repeaters located on the wings of the bridge, in the central post, in the chart house and other rooms where necessary.

Nowadays, the industry produces various types of these devices. Using them is not difficult. Corrections to their testimony are usually instrumental. They are small and permanent. But the devices themselves are complex and require qualified specialists for their maintenance. There are other operational difficulties as well. The gyrocompass must be turned on in advance, before going out to sea, so that it has time, as sailors say, to “come to the meridian”. Needless to say, the gyrocompass provides an incomparably higher accuracy of heading and stability of work in high latitudes, but the authority of the magnetic compass has not decreased at all from this. The fighting of the fleet during the Great Patriotic War showed that it is still needed on ships. In July 1943, during a combat operation, the gyrocompass on the destroyer Soobrazitelny failed. The navigator switched to a magnetic compass and at night, in stormy weather, out of sight of the coast, having traveled about 180 miles (333 kilometers), he reached the base with a discrepancy of 55 cables (10.2 kilometers). The leader of the destroyers "Kharkov", who participated in the same operation, under the same conditions, but with a working gyrocompass, had a discrepancy of 35 cables (6.5 kilometers). In August of the same year, due to a fire on board, the gyrocompass on the gunboat "Red Adjaristan" failed. The navigator of the ship in the course of hostilities successfully conducted accurate laying, using only magnetic compasses.

That is why today, even on the most modern ships equipped with navigation systems, radio engineering and space systems, which include several heading indicators that do not depend on either deviation or declination, there is always a magnetic compass.

But no matter how accurately we measure the course, it can only be plotted graphically on a map. The map is a planar model of the globe. Sailors use only specially made, so-called navigation charts, the distances on which are measured in miles. To understand how such maps were created, one has to look back to the 15th century, to those distant times when people had just learned to plot land and sea on them and swim using them. There were, of course, maps before. But they were more like inept drawings made by eye, from memory. There were also maps based on the scientific ideas of their time, quite accurately depicting the shores and seas known to navigators. Of course, there were many errors in these maps, and they were not built in the same way as maps are built in our time, but nevertheless they were a help to sailors who set sail on the seas and oceans.

It was a time full of contradictions. On the one hand, "experienced people" swore that they met terrible monsters, huge sea snakes, beautiful sirens and other miracles in the ocean, and on the other hand, great geographical discoveries were made one after another. On the one hand, the Holy Inquisition stifled every living thought, and on the other hand, many enlightened people already knew about the spherical shape of the Earth, argued about the size of the globe, had an idea about latitude and longitude. Moreover, it is known that in the very year 1492, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, the German geographer and traveler Martin Beheim had already built a globe. Of course, it was not at all like modern globes. On Behaim's globe and later, more advanced models of the Earth, there were more white spots than accurately shown continents, many lands and coasts were depicted according to the stories of "experienced people" who were dangerous to take a word. Some continents on the first globes were absent altogether. But the main thing was already - in a large circle, perpendicular to the axis of rotation, the equator encircled the model of the Earth, which in Latin means equalizer.

The plane in which it lies, as it were, divides the globe in half and equalizes its halves. The circumference of the equator from the point taken as zero was divided into 360 ° longitude - 180 ° to the east and west. To the south and north of the equator on the globe to the very poles, small circles were drawn parallel to the equator. They were called so - parallels, and the equator began to serve as the starting point for the geographical latitude. The arcs of the meridians, perpendicular to the equator, in the Northern and Southern hemispheres converged at the poles at an angle to each other. Meridian is Latin for "midday". This name, of course, is not accidental, it shows that on the entire meridian line, from pole to pole, noon (as well as at any other moment) occurs simultaneously. From the equator to the north and south, the meridian arcs were divided into degrees - from 0 to 90, respectively, called the degrees of northern and southern latitude.

Now, to find a point on a map or globe, it was enough to specify its latitude and longitude in degrees.

The geographic coordinate grid was finally built.

But it's one thing to find a point on the map and quite another to find it on the high seas. Imperfect maps, a magnetic compass and a primitive goniometric tool for determining vertical angles - that's all that a sailor had at his disposal when setting off on a long voyage. With an arsenal of even such navigational devices, reaching a point that is within sight or even beyond the horizon is a simple matter. Unless, of course, the tops of the distant mountains located near this point were visible above the horizon. But as soon as the sailor went further into the sea, the shores disappeared from sight and monotonous waves surrounded the ship from all sides. Even if the navigator knew the exact direction that should lead him to the goal, even then it was difficult to count on success, since capricious winds and unexplored currents always blow the ship off the intended course. Sailors call this deviation from the course drift.

But even in the absence of drift, it is almost impossible to choose the desired direction using a regular map and navigate the ship along it. And that's why. Suppose that, armed with an ordinary map and compass, we conceived of sailing out of sight of the coast from point A to point B. Let's connect these points with a straight line. Let us now assume that this straight line at point A lies exactly along the course of 45 °. In other words, the AB line at point A will be located at an angle of 45 ° to the plane of the meridian passing through point A. This direction is easy to keep on the compass. And we would come to point B, but on one condition: if the meridians were parallel and our course line at point B corresponded to the direction of 45 °, as well as at point A. But the fact of the matter is that the meridians are not parallel, and gradually converge at an angle to each other. This means that the course at point B will not be 45 °, but somewhat less. Thus, to get from point A to point B, we would have to turn right all the time.

If, having left point A, we will constantly keep a course on our map of 45 °, then point B will remain to our right, we, continuing to follow this course, will cross all the meridians at the same angle and will approach in a complex spiral at the end ends to the pole.

This spiral is called loxodrome. In Greek it means "oblique path". You can always pick up a loxodrome that will take us to any point. 14, using an ordinary map, a lot of complex calculations and constructions would have to be done. This is something the sailors did not like. For decades they have been waiting for such a map, according to which it will be convenient to lay any courses and sail on any seas.

And in 1589, the famous Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerard Mercator came up with a map that finally satisfied the sailors and turned out to be so successful that no one has yet proposed anything better. Sailors around the world still use this card today. It is called just that: the Mercator map, or the map of the conformal cylindrical Mercator projection.

The foundations laid down in the construction of this map are ingeniously simple. It is impossible, of course, to restore the course of G. Mercator's reasoning, but let's assume that he reasoned like this.

Let's assume that all the meridians on the globe (which quite accurately conveys the relative position of the oceans, seas and land on Earth) are made of wire, and the parallels are made of elastic threads that are easily stretched (rubber was not yet known at that time). Let's straighten the meridians so that they turn from arcs into parallel straight lines attached to the equator. The surface of the globe will turn into a cylinder of straight meridians crossed by stretched parallels. Let us cut this cylinder along one of the meridians and spread it on a plane. A geographic grid will be obtained, but the meridians on this grid will not converge, as on a globe, at the points of the poles. In straight parallel lines they will go up and down from the equator, and the parallels will cross them everywhere at the same right angle.

A round island near the equator, as it was round on the globe, will remain round on this map, in the middle latitudes the same island will stretch considerably in latitude, and in the region of the pole it will generally look like a long straight strip. The mutual arrangement of land, sea, configuration of continents, seas, oceans on such a map will change beyond recognition. After all, the meridians remained the same as they were, but the parallels stretched out.

Of course, it was impossible to swim guided by such a map, but it turned out to be fixable - it was only necessary to increase the distance between the parallels. But, of course, not just increase, but in exact accordance with how long the parallels stretched when crossing the namerkator map. On a map built using such a grid, a round island remained round both at the equator and in any other part of the map. But the closer it was to the pole, the more space it occupied on the map. In other words, the scale on such a map increased from the equator to the poles, but the outlines of the objects plotted on the map were obtained almost unchanged.

But how to take into account the change in scale towards the poles? Of course, you can calculate the scale separately for each latitude. Only such a voyage will be a very troublesome business, in which, after each movement to the north or south, rather complicated calculations will have to be made. But it turns out that such calculations do not have to be made on the Mercator map. The map is enclosed in a frame, on the vertical sides of which the degrees and minutes of the meridian are marked. At the equator, they are shorter, and the closer to the pole, the longer. They use the frame as follows: the distance to be measured is removed with a compass, brought to that part of the frame that is at the latitude of the measured segment and see how many minutes fit in it. And since the minute and degree on such a map change in magnitude depending on latitude, but in fact they always remain the same, it was they who became the basis for choosing linear measures by which sailors measured their path.

France had its own measure - a league, equal to 1/20 of a meridian degree, which is 5537 meters. The British measured their sea roads in leagues, which also represent a fraction of a degree and are 4828 meters in size. But gradually, sailors all over the world agreed that it is most convenient to use the magnitude of the arc corresponding to one arc minute of the meridian to measure distances at sea. This is how sailors still measure their paths and distances precisely in minutes of the meridian arc. And in order to give this measure a name similar to the names of other travel measures, they dubbed the minute of the meridian a mile. Its length is 1852 meters.

The word "mile" is non-Russian, so let's look at the Dictionary of Foreign Words. It says that the word is English. Then it is reported that miles are different: a geographical mile (7420 m), land miles are different in size in different states, and finally, a nautical mile is 1852.3 meters.

Everything is true about the mile, except for the English origin of the word; it's actually Latin. In ancient books, a mile was quite common and meant a thousand double steps. From Rome, and not from England, this word first came to us. So there is a mistake in the dictionary. But this mistake can be understood and forgiven, since the compiler of the dictionary entry had, of course, in mind the international maritime, or, as the British call it, the Admiralty mile. In the times of Peter the Great, it came to us precisely from England. We called it that - the English mile. Sometimes today it is called the same.

Using the mile is very convenient. Therefore, sailors are not going to replace the mile with any other measure yet.

Having laid his way on the Mercator chart along the ruler, having calculated and remembered which course to follow, the sailor can safely set sail, without thinking about the fact that his path, straight as an arrow, is not at all a straight line on the map, but just the same curve that was mentioned a little earlier is loxodrome.

It is certainly not the shortest path between two points. But if these points are not very far from each other, then the sailors are not upset and put up with the fact that they will burn excess fuel and spend extra time on the transition. But on this map, the loxodrome looks like a straight line that costs nothing to build, and you can be sure that it will lead exactly where you need it. And if there is a big voyage ahead, such as, for example, crossing the ocean, in which the additional costs for the curvature of the path will result in a significant amount and time? In this case, the sailors learned to build another curve on the Mercator map - the great circle, which means in Greek "straight path". The orthodrome on the map coincides with the so-called great circle arc, which is the shortest distance between two points on the sea.

These two concepts do not fit well in the mind: the shortest distance and the arc, standing side by side. This is all the more difficult to reconcile with if you look at the Mercator map: the great circle looks much longer than the loxodrome. If on the Mercator chart both of these curves are laid between two points, the orthodrome will bend like a bow, and the loxodrome will stretch out like a bowstring tightening its ends. But we must not forget that ships do not float on a flat map, but on the surface of a ball. And on the surface of the ball, a segment of the arc of the great circle will just be the shortest distance.

With the unit of measurement of distances in the sea - a mile - is closely related to the unit of speed adopted in navigation - the knot, which we will discuss later.

If on the course line laid on the map, the distances covered by the ship are periodically plotted, then the navigator will always know where his ship is, that is, the coordinates of his place in the sea. This method of determining coordinates is called dead reckoning and is widely used in navigation laying. But a necessary condition for this is the ability to determine the speed of the ship and measure the time, only then can the distance traveled be calculated.

Ship speed indicators. 2. Bottles. 2. Lag manual. 3. Log mechanical

We have already said above that on the ships of the sailing fleet, hourglasses were used to measure time, designed for half an hour (bottles), one hour and four hours (watch). But there were also other hourglasses on the ships - bottles. In total, these watches were calculated for half a minute, and in some cases even for fifteen seconds. One can only marvel at the art of glassblowers, who managed to make such precise instruments for those times. No matter how small these watches were, no matter how short the period of time they measured, the service that these watches rendered to sailors in their time is invaluable, and they, like bottles, are remembered every time they talk about determining the speed of a ship. , as well as when measuring the distance traveled.

The problem of determining the past and future path has always been and is facing sailors.

The first methods of measuring speed were perhaps the most primitive of navigational definitions: they simply threw a piece of wood, bark, a bird's feather or other floating object overboard from the bow of the ship and at the same time noticed the time. Walking along the side from the bow to the stern of the ship, they did not let the floating object out of their eyes, and when it passed the cut of the stern, they again noticed the time. Knowing the length of the ship and the time during which the object passed it, the speed was calculated. And knowing the total travel time, they made an approximate idea of ​​the distance traveled.

On sailing ships, in very light winds, this ancient method determines the speed of the ship today. But already in the 16th century, the first lag appeared. A sector of 65-70 degrees was made from a thick board, with a radius of about 60-70 centimeters. As a rule, a lead load in the form of a strip was strengthened along the arc limiting the sector, calculated in such a way that the sector, thrown into the water, sank two-thirds upright and a small corner remained visible above the water. A thin strong cable was attached to the top of this corner, which was called laglin. In the sector, approximately in the geometric center of the immersed part, a conical hole 1.5-2 centimeters in diameter was drilled and a wooden plug was tightly fitted to it, to which the laglin was firmly tied eight to ten centimeters from the end attached to the corner of the lag. This cork was quite firmly held in the hole of the immersed lag, but it could be pulled out with a sharp jerk.

Why was it so difficult to attach the laglin to the lag sector? The fact is that a flat body moving in a liquid medium is located perpendicular to the direction of motion if the force driving this body is applied to its center of windage (similar to a kite). It is worth, however, to transfer the point of application of forces to the edge of this body or to its corner, and it, like a flag, will be located parallel to the direction of movement.

So the lag, when thrown overboard of a moving vessel, is held perpendicular to the direction of its course, since the lag is attached to a cork standing in the center of the sail of the sector plane. When the ship moves, the sector experiences a lot of water resistance. But as soon as the laglin is pulled sharply, the cork pops out of the nest, the point of application of force is transferred to the corner of the sector, and it begins to plan, to slide on the surface of the water. He practically does not experience resistance, and in this form it was not at all difficult to pull the sector out of the water.

Short shkertiki (thin tips) were woven into the laglin at a distance of about 15 meters from each other (more precisely, 14.4 m), on which one, two, three, four, and so on knots were tied. Sometimes the segments between two adjacent skins were also called knots. The laglin, together with the shkertik, was wound on a small view (like a coil), which was convenient to hold in your hands.

Two sailors stood at the stern of the ship. One of them threw the lag sector overboard and held a view in his hands. The lag, having fallen into the water, rested and reeled the laglin from the view after the moving ship. The sailor, raising the view over his head, carefully watched the laglin rolled off the view and, as soon as the first shkert came close to the edge of the aft cut, shouted: “Tovs!” (it means "get ready!"). And almost immediately after that: “Spin!” (“Turn over!”).

The second sailor held bottles in his hands, designed for 30 seconds, but the team of the first turned them over and, when all the sand was poured into the lower tank, shouted: “Stop!”

The first sailor jerked the laglin sharply, a wooden cork popped out of the hole, the lag sector lay flat on the water and stopped winding the laglin.

Noticing how many bundles went overboard when winding up the laglin, the sailor determined the speed of the ship in miles per hour. It was not at all difficult to do this: the shkertiki were woven into the laglin at a distance of 1/120 of a mile, and the clock showed 30 seconds, that is, 1/120 of an hour. Therefore, how many knots of laglin rolled off the view in half a minute, so many miles did the ship cover in an hour. Hence the expression: “The ship is moving at a speed of so many knots” or “The ship is making so many knots.” Thus, a knot at sea is not a linear distance measure, but a measure of speed. This must be firmly grasped, because, speaking of speed, we are so used to adding “per hour”, which happens to be read in the most authoritative publications of “knots per hour”. This, of course, is wrong, because a knot is a mile/hour.

Now no one uses a manual lag. More M.V. Lomonosov in his work "On the Greater Accuracy of the Sea Route" proposed a mechanical log. Described by M.V. The Lomonosov lag consisted of a turntable, similar to a large cigar, along which the wings-blades were located at an angle to the axis, as on the rotor of a modern hydroturbine. A spinner tied to a laglin made of a cable that hardly twisted, M.V. Lomonosov proposed to lower the ship astern. She, of course, rotated the faster, the faster the course of this ship was. It was proposed to tie the front end of the laglin to the shaft of a mechanical counter, which was supposed to be mounted on the stern of the ship and count the miles traveled.

Lomonosov proposed, described, but did not have time to build and test his mechanical log. After him, several inventors of the mechanical lag appeared: Walker, Masson, Klintock and others. Their lags are somewhat different from each other, but the principle of their work is the same, which was proposed by M.V. Lomonosov.

More recently, as soon as a ship or a ship went to sea, the navigator with a sailor brought to the upper deck a turntable of a lag, a laglin and a counter, which was usually called a typewriter. A turntable with a laglin was thrown overboard, and the machine was attached to the gunwale of the aft cut, and the navigator copied into the navigation log the readings that appeared on her dial at the time the work began. At any moment, looking at the dial of such a lag, one could quite accurately find out about the path traveled by the ship. There are lags that simultaneously show the speed in knots.

Nowadays, many ships have more advanced and accurate logs installed. Their action is based on the property of water and any other liquid to exert pressure on an object moving in it, which increases as the speed of this object increases. A not very complex electronic device transfers the value of this pressure (dynamic water pressure) to a device installed on the bridge or at the navigational command post of the ship, having previously, of course, converted this value into miles and knots.

These are the so-called hydrodynamic lags. There are also more advanced logs for determining the speed of the vessel relative to the seabed, that is, the absolute speed. Such a log works on the principle of a sonar station and is called hydroacoustic.

In conclusion, let's say that the word lag comes from the Dutch log, which means distance.

So, having at his disposal a compass, a navigation chart, and units of measurement of distance and speed - a mile and a knot, the navigator can easily conduct a navigation plot, periodically marking the distances traveled by the ship on the map. But the presence of numerable coordinates of one's place in the sea does not in the least reject the observed ones, that is, those determined by an instrumental method from celestial bodies, radio beacons or coastal landmarks plotted on a map, but, on the contrary, necessarily implies them. Sailors call the difference between the calculated coordinates and the observed ones the discrepancy. The smaller the discrepancy, the more skillful the navigator. When sailing in the visibility of the coast, it is best to determine the observed place by the lighthouses, which are clearly visible during the day and emit light at night.

There are few engineering structures in the world, about which there are as many legends and legends as about lighthouses. Already in the poem "Odyssey" by the ancient Greek poet Homer, dating back to the 8th-7th centuries BC, it is said that the inhabitants of Ithaca lit fires so that Odysseus, who was expected to go home, could recognize his native harbor.

Suddenly, on the tenth day, he appeared to us
homeland coast.
Howling he is already close; it has all the lights on it
we could discern.
This, in fact, is the first mention of the use by sailors of the lights of ordinary fires for navigational purposes when sailing near the coast at night.

Since those distant times, centuries have passed before the lighthouses acquired a familiar appearance for everyone - a tall tower topped with a lantern. And once performing the function of the first lighthouses, tar barrels or braziers with coal burned directly on the ground or. on high poles. Over time, to increase the visibility range of light sources, they were installed on artificial structures, sometimes reaching grandiose sizes. The lighthouses of the Mediterranean Sea have the most respectable age.

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world is the Lighthouse of Alexandria, or Pharos, 143 meters high, built of white marble in 283 BC. The construction of this tallest building of antiquity lasted 20 years. A huge and massive lighthouse, surrounded by a spiral staircase, served as a guiding star for sailors, showing them the way during the day with smoke from the oil burned on its top, and at night with the help of fire, as the ancients said, "more brilliant and inextinguishable than the stars." Thanks to a special light reflection system, the visibility range of the fire on a clear night reached 20 miles. The lighthouse was built on the island of Pharos at the entrance to the Egyptian port of Alexandria and served simultaneously as an observation post, a fortress and a weather station.

No less famous in antiquity was the famous Colossus of Rhodes - a giant bronze figure of Helios, the god of the Sun, installed on the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea in 280 BC. Its construction lasted 12 years. Considered one of the seven wonders of the world, this 32-meter-high statue also stood in the harbor of Rhodes and served as a lighthouse until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 224 BC. e.

In addition to the named lighthouses, about 20 more were known at that time. Today, only one of them has survived - the lighthouse tower near the Spanish port city of La Coruña. It is possible that this lighthouse was built by the Phoenicians. During its long life, it was renovated more than once by the Romans, but on the whole it retained its original appearance.

The construction of lighthouses developed extremely slowly, and by the beginning of the 19th century there were no more than a hundred of them on all the seas and oceans of the globe. This is primarily due to the fact that it was in those places where lighthouses were most needed that their construction turned out to be very expensive and laborious.

Light sources of lighthouses were continuously improved. In the XVII-XVIII centuries, several dozen candles weighing 2-3 pounds (about 0.9-1.4 kg) burned simultaneously in the lanterns of lighthouses. In 1784, Argand oil lamps appeared, in which the wick received oil under constant pressure, the flame stopped smoking and became brighter. At the beginning of the 19th century, lighthouses began to install gas lighting. At the end of 1858, electric lighting equipment appeared at the Upper Forland Lighthouse (English coast of the English Channel).

In Russia, the first lighthouses were built in 1702 at the mouth of the Don and in 1704 at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. The construction of the oldest lighthouse in the Baltic - Tolbukhin near Kronstadt - stretched out for almost 100 years. The building began to be built on the orders of Peter I. His own sketch has been preserved indicating the main dimensions of the tower and the inscription: “The architect will be free to do otherwise.” The construction of a stone building required significant funds and a large number of skilled masons. The construction was delayed, and the king ordered the urgent construction of a temporary wooden tower. His order was crawled out young, and in 1719 a light flashed on the Kotlin lighthouse (the name comes from the spit on which it was installed). In 1736, another attempt was made to erect a stone building, but it was only completed in 1810. The project was developed with the participation of the talented Russian architect AD. Zakharov, the creator of the building of the Main Admiralty in St. Petersburg. Since 1736, the lighthouse has been named after Colonel Fyodor Semenovich Tolbukhin, who defeated the Swedish amphibious assault on the Kotlin Spit in 1705, and then the military commandant of Kronstadt

The oldest lighthouses in the world. 1, 2. Ancient lighthouses with open fire. 3. Faros (Alexandria) lighthouse. 4. Lighthouse of A Coruña

The round, low, stocky tower of the Tolbukhin lighthouse is known to dozens of generations of Russian sailors. In the early 1970s, the lighthouse was reconstructed. The coast around the artificial island was reinforced with reinforced concrete slabs. The tower is now equipped with modern optical equipment, which makes it possible to increase the visibility range of the fire, and the country's first automatic wind power plant, which ensures its uninterrupted operation.

In 1724, the Kern (Koksher) lighthouse on the island of the same name began to operate in the Gulf of Finland. By the beginning of the 19th century, 15 lighthouses operated on the Baltic Sea. These are the oldest lighthouses in Russia. Their service life exceeds 260 years or more, and the Kõpu lighthouse on Dago Island has existed for more than 445 years.

At some of these facilities, new lighthouse technology was introduced for the first time. So, on Keri, which turned 250 years old in 1974, an octagonal lantern with oil lamps and copper reflectors was installed in 1803 -? the first light-optical system in Russia. In 1858, this lighthouse is equipped (also the first in Russia) with a fresnel lighting system (named after the inventor of the French physicist Augustin Jean Fresnel). This system was an optical device consisting of two flat mirrors (biserkals) located at a small (several arc minutes) angle to each other.

Thus, Carey twice became the founder of various lighting systems: capitric - a mirror reflective system, and diopter - a system based on the refraction of light when passing through individual refractive surfaces. The transition to these optical systems has largely improved the qualitative characteristics of the lighthouse and increased the efficiency of ensuring the safety of navigation.

The well-known 34-meter Rostral Columns, built in 1806 to commemorate the glorious victories of Russia at sea, also served as lighthouses. They pointed to the branching of the Neva into the Bolshaya and Malaya Neva and were installed on both sides of the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island.

One of the oldest lighthouses on the Black Sea is Tarkhankutsky with a tower 30 meters high. It entered service on June 16, 1817. On one of the buildings of the lighthouse, the words are inscribed: “Lighthouses are the shrine of the seas. They belong to everyone and are inviolable, like the ambassadors of the powers.” Today its white fire is visible for 17 miles. In addition, it is equipped with a radio beacon and an audible alarm.

In 1843, at the very tip of the Quarantine Mole of the Odessa Bay, a guard posthouse with a mast was erected, on which two oil lanterns were raised with the help of a winch. Thus, this year should be considered the year of birth of the Vorontsovsky lighthouse. However, the real lighthouse on the Quarantine Mole was opened only in 1863. It is a 30-foot (over 9 m) cast-iron tower topped with a special lantern.

In 1867, the Odessa lighthouse became the first in Russia and the fourth in the world to be converted to electric lighting. In general, the transition to a new energy source was extremely slow. In 1883, out of five thousand lighthouses on the globe, only 14 were with electric light sources. The rest still worked on kerosene, acetylene and gas lamps and burners.

After the raid pier was significantly lengthened, in 1888 a new Vorontsovsky lighthouse was built, which stood until 1941. It was a cast-iron tower 17 meters high. During the defense of Odessa, the lighthouse had to be blown up. But it is he who is depicted on the medal "For the Defense of Odessa". The new lighthouse, the one we see today, was built in early 1954. The tower, which has a cylindrical shape, has become much higher - 30 meters, not counting the 12-meter base. In a small house, which is on the second pier, a remote control of all mechanisms is mounted. The austere white tower, standing on the very edge of the raid pier, is depicted on stamps and postcards and has become one of the symbols of the city.

By 1917, 163 light beacons were built on all the seas of Russia. The seas of the Far East had the most underdeveloped network of lighthouses (only 24, with coasts stretching several thousand kilometers). On the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, for example, there was only one lighthouse - Elizabeth (on Sakhalin Island), on the Pacific coast as well, one - Petropavlovsk on the way to the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

During the war, a significant part of the lighthouses was destroyed. Of the 69 lighthouses on the Black and Azov Seas, 42 were completely destroyed, and 16 of the 45 on the Baltic Sea. In total, 69 lighthouse towers, 12 radio beacons, 20 sound signal installations and more than a hundred luminous navigation signs were destroyed and destroyed. Almost all surviving items of navigational equipment were in poor condition. Therefore, after the end of the war, the Hydrographic Service of the Navy began restoration work. As of January 1, 1987, 527 light beacons operated on the seas of our country, 174 of them on the seas of the Far East, 83 on the Barents and White Seas, 30 on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and 240 on other seas.

At the beginning of 1982, the lights of another Far Eastern lighthouse - Dum Vostochnaya - lit up on the coast of the Sea of ​​​​Okhotsk. In the desert area between Okhotsk and Magadan, a 34-meter red cast-iron tower has risen on the slope of a hill.

In 1970, the construction of a stationary lighthouse was completed in the Tallinn Bay, 26 kilometers northwest of the port of Tallinn (Estonia).

Modern decoys. 1. Lighthouse Sandy (Caspian Sea). 2. Lighthouse Chibuyiy (Shumshu Island). 3. Lighthouse Peredniy Siversov (Black Sea). 4. Piltun Lighthouse (Sakhalin Island). 5. Shventoy Lighthouse (Baltic Sea). 6. Thallia Lighthouse

Lighthouse Tallinn was the first automatic lighthouse in the USSR, all systems of which are powered by atomic isotopes. The lighthouse is installed at a depth of 7.5-10.5 meters in the area of ​​the Tallinmadal bank on a hydraulic engineering foundation (a stone bed with a diameter of 64 meters and a giant reinforced concrete conical massif with a base diameter of 26 meters). The conical shape of the base (45°) significantly reduces the ice load on the structure. The lighthouse protects the bank and provides approaches to the port. The reinforced concrete monolithic cylindrical tower of the lighthouse 24.4 meters high ends with a glazed circular steel lantern structure. The total height of the lighthouse from sea level is 31.2 meters, from the bottom - 41 meters. The tower is lined with cast-iron tubing, painted black (lower broadened part), orange (middle part) and white (upper part). It has eight floors with technical and service premises (isotope power plant - on the first floor). The light-optical device provides a range of white fire for 28 kilometers. The Tallinn lighthouse is equipped with a radio beacon with a range of 55 kilometers, a radar transponder beacon and equipment for the telecontrol system for all navigational aids of the lighthouse. At a height of 24.2 meters, a heavy bronze memorial plaque is installed, on which the names of destroyers, patrol ships, submarines and auxiliary vessels are cast - a total of 72 ships that died during the Great Patriotic War in the Tallinn region.

Lighthouses like the one in Tallinn do not need maintenance personnel. Therefore, at present, a course has been taken for the construction of just such lighthouses.

Among the lighthouses built and put into operation in recent years, a special place belongs to the Irbensky automatic lighthouse. It was built on the high seas on a hydraulic engineering foundation. All technical means of the lighthouse work automatically. The lighthouse is equipped with a helipad.

A significant place in navigation equipment, especially recently, began to be occupied by pulsed lighting equipment, with the introduction of which there is no need for complex optical systems. Impulse lighting systems, which have a huge luminous intensity, are especially effective on highly illuminated backgrounds of ports and cities.

To warn about dangerous places located far from the coast, or as reception areas when approaching ports, floating lighthouses are used, which are vessels of a special design, anchored and equipped with lighthouse equipment.

In order to confidently identify the lighthouses during the day, they are given a different architectural shape and color. At night and in conditions of poor visibility, the crews of ships are helped by the fact that each of the beacons is assigned radio light and acoustic signals of a certain nature, as well as lights of various colors - all these are elements of the code by which the sailors determine the "name" of the lighthouse.

Each ship or ship has a reference book “Lights and Signs”, which contains information about the type of construction of each lighthouse and its color, the height of its tower, the height of the fire above sea level, the nature (constant, flashing, eclipsing) and the color of the lighthouse light. In addition, data on all aids to navigational equipment of the seas are included in the corresponding sailing directions and indicated on navigation charts at their locations.

The range of luminous beacons is 20-50 kilometers, radio beacons - 30-500 or more, beacons with aerial acoustic signals - from 5 to 15, with hydroacoustic signals - up to 25 kilometers. Acoustic air signals are now served by nautophones - howler monkeys, and earlier bells were humming on lighthouses, warning of a dangerous place - about shoals, reefs and other navigational dangers.

Now it is difficult to imagine navigation without lighthouses. Putting out their light is the same as somehow removing the stars from the sky, used by navigators to determine the location of the ship in an astronomical way.

The choice of places, installation, and ensuring the continuous operation of the lighthouse are carried out by people of a special specialty - hydrographers. In wartime, their work is of particular importance. When on the morning of December 26, 1941, the ships of the Black Sea Fleet and the ships that were part of the Azov flotilla and the Kerch naval base began landing on the northeastern coast of the Kerch Peninsula, well-organized hydrographic support contributed to the successful landing operations. On the eve of the landing, alignments of two luminous portable buoys were equipped near the coast on the approaches to Feodosia, and orientation lights were installed, including on the rock of Elchan-Kaya.

In the dead of night on December 26, lieutenants Dmitry Vyzhull and Vladimir Mospan secretly landed from the Shch-203 submarine, reached an icy sheer cliff on a rubber boat, with great difficulty climbed to its top with equipment and installed an acetylene lantern there. This fire reliably ensured the approach of our landing ships to the shore, and was also a good reference point for the landing craft approaching Feodosia. The submarine, from which the daredevils landed, was forced to move away from the rock and dive due to the appearance of an enemy aircraft. At the appointed time, the boat did not approach the place of meeting with the hydrographers, and the search for them, made somewhat later, ended in failure. The names of lieutenants Dmitry Gerasimovich Vyzhulla and Vladimir Efimovich Mospan are listed on the memorial plaque of the dead, installed in the building of the Hydrographic Department of the Black Sea Fleet, their photographs are placed on the stand of hydrographers who died during the Great Patriotic War, in the Main Directorate of Navigation and Oceanography.

During the heroic defense of Sevastopol, the Chersonese lighthouse, under continuous bombing and shelling, continued to operate, ensuring the entry and exit of ships.

During the third assault on the city, June 2 - July 4, 1942, more than 60 enemy bombers attacked Chersonese. All residential and office premises of the lighthouse were destroyed, the optics were broken.

The head of the lighthouse, who gave the fleet more than 50 years of his life, Andrey Ilyich Dudar, despite being seriously wounded, remained at his combat post until the end. Here are the lines from the petition for naming the passenger ship "Andrei Dudar": "... a hereditary sailor of the Black Sea Fleet - his grandfather was a participant in the first defense of Sevastopol, his father served as a caretaker of the Chersonese lighthouse for 30 years. Andrei Ilyich was born at the lighthouse, served as a sailor on the destroyer "Kerch". At the end of the civil war, he worked to restore the fleet. He began the Great Patriotic War as a head of a lighthouse...” Work at a lighthouse requires special hardening from people. The life of lighthouses cannot be called arranged, especially in winter. These people are mostly stern, unspoiled.

Lighthouses have a surprisingly sharp sense of duty and responsibility. Once Alexander Blok wrote to his mother from the small port of Abervrac in Brittany: “Recently, a watchman died on one of the rotating lighthouses, not having had time to prepare the car for the evening. Then his wife made the children turn the car by hand all night. For this she was given the Order of the Legion of Honor. The American romantic poet G. Longfellow, the author of the remarkable epic about the folk hero of the Indians "The Song of Hiawatha", wrote about the eternal connection between the lighthouse and the ship:

Like Prometheus, chained to a rock, Holding the light stolen from Zeus, Meeting the storm in the roaring darkness with his chest, He sends greetings to the sailors: “Sail, majestic ships!”

The ocean forced hydrographers to create a whole system of protection against maritime dangers, which improved along with navigation. It will develop and improve as long as the ocean and ships exist.

Thus, when sailing near the coast, lighthouses, mountain peaks, and individual prominent places on the coast have long served as landmarks for sailors. Having determined the directions (bearings) for two or three such objects using the compass, the sailors receive a point on the map - the place where their ship is located. But what if there are no noticeable places or the coast has disappeared beyond the horizon? It was this circumstance that for a long time was an insurmountable obstacle to the development of navigation. Even the invention of the compass - after all, it only shows the direction of the ship's movement - did not solve the problem.

When it became known that it was possible to determine the longitude by the chronometer, and the latitude by the heights of the luminaries, a reliable goniometer was required to determine the heights.

Before the goniometric instrument, which suits sailors, the sextant, appeared and asserted its superiority, many other instruments, its predecessors, were on ships. The very first among them, perhaps, was the sea astrolabe - a bronze ring with divisions into degrees. An alidade (ruler) passed through the center, both halves of which were displaced relative to each other. At the same time, the edge of one was a continuation of the opposite edge of the other, so that the ruler would pass through the center as accurately as possible. There were two holes on the alidade: a large one for searching for the luminary, and a small one for fixing it. During measurements, she was held or hung by a ring.

Goniometers and chronometer. 1. Astrolabe. 2. Quadrant. 3. Chronometer. 4. Sextant

Such an instrument was suitable only for rough observations: it oscillated not only during pitching and in windy weather, but also from a simple touch of hands. Nevertheless, the very first long-distance voyages were made with just such a device.

Subsequently, the astronomical ring came into use. The ring also had to be suspended, but during the measurements there was no need to touch it with your hands. A tiny sunbeam, penetrating through the hole on the inner surface of the ring, fell on a scale with divisions. But the astronomical ring was also a primitive instrument.

Until the 18th century, Jacob's staff, also known as the astronomical ray, arrow, golden rod, but most of all as a city rod, served as a navigational tool for measuring angles. It consisted of two rails. A movable transverse rail was mounted on a long rail perpendicular to it. The long rail is marked with degrees.

To measure the height of a star, the observer placed a long rail at one end near the eye, and moved the short one so that it touched the star with one end and the horizon line with the other. One and the same short rail could not serve to measure any heights of the stars, so several of them were attached to the device. Despite its imperfection, the gradstock existed for about a hundred years, until at the end of the 17th century the famous English navigator John Davis offered his quadrant. It consisted of two sectors with an arc of 65 and 25° with two movable diopters and one fixed one at the common top of the sectors. The observer, looking into the narrow slit of the eye diopter, projected the thread of the objective diopter onto the sighted object. After that, the readings were summed up along the arcs of both sectors. But the quadrant was far from perfect. Standing on a swinging deck, aligning thread, horizon, and sunbeam was no easy task. In calm weather, this was possible, but in waves the heights were measured very roughly. If the sun shone through the darkness, its image on the diopter blurred, and the stars were completely invisible.

To measure heights, a device was needed that would allow the luminary to be aligned with the horizon line once and regardless of the movement of the ship and the position of the observer. The idea of ​​such a device belongs to I. Newton (1699), but it was designed by J. Hadley in England and T. Godfrey in America (1730-1731) independently of each other. This marine goniometric instrument had a scale (limb) that was one-eighth of a circle, and therefore was named octane. In 1757, Captain Kampell improved this navigational instrument by making a limb in one-sixth of a circle, the device was called the sextant. They can measure angles up to 120°. Sextant, like its predecessor octane, belongs to a large group of instruments that use the principle of double reflection. Turning the large mirror of the device, you can send the reflection of the luminary to the small mirror, align the edge of the reflected luminary, such as the sun, with the horizon line and at this moment take a reading.

Over time, the sextant was improved: an optical tube was installed, a number of colored filters were introduced to protect the eye from the bright sun during observations. But, despite the appearance of this perfect goniometer and the fact that by the middle of the 19th century nautical astronomy had already become an independent science, methods for determining coordinates were limited and inconvenient. Sailors were not able to determine latitude and longitude at any time of the day, although scientists proposed a number of cumbersome and difficult mathematical formulas. These formulas have not received practical distribution. Latitude was usually determined only once a day - at true noon; in this case, the formulas were simplified, and the calculations themselves were reduced to a minimum. The chronometer made it possible to determine longitude at any time of the day, but at the same time it was necessary to know the latitude of one's place and the height of the sun. Only in 1837 did the English captain Thomas Somner, thanks to a happy accident, make a discovery that had a significant impact on the development of practical astronomy, he developed the rules for obtaining a line of equal heights, laying which on the map of the Mercator projection made it possible to obtain an observed place. These lines were named somner lines in honor of the captain who discovered them.

Having a sextant, a chronometer and a compass, the navigator can navigate any ship, regardless of whether it has others, even the most modern navigational electronic systems. With these time-tested instruments, the sailor is free and independent from any vicissitudes on the high seas. A navigator who neglects the sextant risks being in a difficult position.

(1) In 1928, the International Hydrographic Bureau adopted a rounded average value of 1852 meters. The USSR joined this decision in 1931 (Circular of the Main Directorate of the Navy No. 317 of July 8, 1931).

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Imagine that the ship is on the high seas. It is surrounded on all sides only by sky and water; no shore or island is visible around. Swim wherever you want! when there were no Earth satellites or radio communications? If the captain of a ship does not know how to make astronomical observations, he will not be able to determine the location of his ship. There is only one way out - to surrender "to the will of the waves." But in this case, the ship is doomed to almost certain death.

Parallels and meridians

The entire surface of the globe is covered with a series of imaginary mutually perpendicular lines, which are called parallels and meridians, and their combination makes up the so-called degree grid. The line that is formed by a section of the globe by a plane passing through the center of the Earth perpendicular to the axis of its rotation is called equator. The equator is equally distant from both the South and North Poles. longitude called the distance in degrees from some "zero" meridian to the west (western longitude) and to the east (eastern longitude). Longitude is measured from 0 to 180 degrees along the earth's equator. latitude called the distance in degrees from the equator to some point lying either between the North Pole and the equator (North latitude), or between the South Pole and the Equator (South latitude). Latitude is measured from 0 to 90 degrees. The introduction of the concept of longitude and latitude is of great importance: it made it possible to mark, to fix the location of one or another distant expedition in little-known areas of the earth's surface, or to determine the location of a ship on the high seas. Latitude and longitude at the same time serve as the basis of any geographical map. The longitude and latitude of any place are determined by astronomical observations. Safe navigation in the open seas and oceans was based on these observations.

Nautical mile

The coordinates of the location of the ship on the high seas were determined only by astronomical observations. From here the value is taken nautical mile- the basic unit of measurement for the distances traveled by a ship. A nautical mile corresponds to a change in the position of any luminary by exactly one minute of arc. For clarity, let's imagine that the Sun is in the meridian and it is observed from two ships. If, in this case, the difference in the heights of the Sun is one minute of arc, then, consequently, the distance between these ships will be equal to one nautical mile.

Nautical Science

The lack of precise knowledge about the movement of celestial bodies and the inability to make astronomical observations have long served as a huge obstacle to the development of navigation. Thus, there was an urgent need to improve navigation science and nautical astronomy. The English Parliament in 1714 awarded a prize of 20,000 pounds to anyone who would offer a method for determining the longitude of a place at sea, even with an accuracy of half a degree. Many people have been working on this issue for decades. It was tempting to become the author of such an important invention, it was no less tempting to be entitled to such a solid prize. More than half a century has passed, and the task set by the Parliament has not yet been solved.

Method for determining longitude

Finally, in 1770 the watchmaker Arnold proposed to Parliament longitude method In the open sea. This method was based on the transportation of chronometers. The first chronometers suitable for this purpose were built Harrison back in 1744. This method was as follows. Going to sea from some port, the longitude of which is known, they use a correctly running chronometer, which shows the time of the starting point. While on the high seas, travelers determined the local time by observing the heavenly bodies. From the comparison of local time with the reading of the chronometer, the time difference was found. This time difference is the difference between the longitudes of the starting point and the point of location. Using this method, in 1843, the longitude of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory was determined with great accuracy (up to a hundredth of a second).

The position of a point on the earth's surface

So, the position of a point on the earth's surface determined by longitude and latitude. The magnitude of the meridian arc from the earth's equator to a given location determines its latitude. The magnitude of the arc of the equator from the zero (main) meridian to the meridian of a given place determines its longitude. The main, or zero, meridian is considered to be the one that passes through the famous Greenwich Astronomical Observatory, located in England, not far from London. To determine the longitude of any point on Earth, it is enough to know the clock readings at that place and at Greenwich at the same moment.. This is based on the fact that the difference in the readings of clocks at the same moment in any two places is equal to the difference in the longitudes of these places. The whole circle, as we know, is 360 degrees, which corresponds to 24 hours; One hour corresponds to 15 degrees, and one minute of time corresponds to 1/4 degree, or 15 minutes of arc. So, for example, the difference between clock readings for the same time in Leningrad and Greenwich is 2 hours and 1 minute. Therefore, Leningrad is 30 degrees and 15 minutes east of Greenwich. Or, as they say, Leningrad has 30 degrees and 15 minutes of east longitude. Latitude is the arc of a meridian from the earth's equator to a specific location. Or, in other words, the latitude of a point on the earth's surface is equal to the angular height of the pole above the horizon. Therefore, to determine the latitude of the location of the ship in the sea, a series of astronomical observations were carried out. These observations were usually made with a goniometric instrument called sextant. During the day, with the help of this instrument, the height is measured, and at night the height of the Moon, Polaris or some other star. In connection with the invention of radio, determining longitude at sea is much easier.

International Time Commission

A special International Time Commission, which conditionally divided the entire globe into nine zones. A special scheme has been developed, obligatory for all countries of the world, for the transmission of accurate, so-called rhythmic, time signals based on observations of stars. Rhythmic time signals were transmitted several times a day by radio from nine of the most powerful radio stations at various hours of Greenwich time. The most famous of these radio stations were AyRugby in England and the Comintern station in Moscow. Therefore, at whatever point on the globe the ship was, with the help of radio, at least from one of the nine stations, it received a signal of the exact time and, consequently, knew the clock reading for the main meridian at the given moment. Then, with the help of astronomical observations, the exact local time was determined and, by the difference between these two times, the longitude of the ship's location.

On the movement of continents

famous geologist Wegener once suggested that continents several are moving. This movement, in his opinion, is so significant that it can be detected with the help of astronomical observations in a relatively short time. From this it followed that the longitude of the place also changes, and this change can be noticed over a relatively short period of time. The assumption made by Wegener aroused great interest among specialists. A commission of representatives of the International Astronomical and International Geodetic Unions has developed a project to determine world longitudes by radio every few years. For the first time this determination of longitudes was carried out in 1926. Three groups of observatories were chosen as the peaks of the main polygon. The first group - in Algeria (Africa), Zi-Ka-Wei (China) and San Diego (California); the second group - in Greenwich, Tokyo, Vancouver and Ottawa (Canada); the third group - Manilla (Philippines), Honolulu (Sandwich Islands), San Diego and Washington. These observatories had a connection with a number of observatories working on the service of time. At the same time, longitudinal observations were carried out by many observatories and temporary stations. The work was carried out successfully. Radio signals were received over great distances. So, for example, radio signals from Bordeaux (France) stations were received in America and Australia. Longitudes were determined with exceptionally high accuracy, and the error of closing the main polygon did not exceed 0.007 seconds. In 1933, this enterprise was repeated on an even grander scale, and the technical level of the work carried out was even higher than in 1926. As a result, it turned out that the assumption made by Wegener was not fully confirmed. If there is a secular displacement of America relative to Europe, then its magnitude, in any case, cannot exceed three centimeters per year. It is interesting, however, to note that from a comparison of the reception of time signals systematically carried out by the observatories of Europe and America, a noticeable (about 18 meters) fluctuation in longitude with a period of about 11 years, almost coinciding with the period of sunspots, was found.