The seven seas

[om15]

The term "seven seas" has been in use since about 2000BC, the seas referred to in those days were different to the seas that we name these days.
I found that I couldn't name the seven seas today, can anyone else name them without looking them up?

[TheGreenGoblin]

I am tempted to have a go as nobody has tried to answer this interesting question. I am , of course, on om15's in gore list, so perhaps somebody can be my amanuensis, and transcribe this for me! If I am even partially correct please take full credit under your own name. If not, blame that cretin, the Green Goblin.

I guess the list has changed over time but I proffer the following:

Baltic, Caspian North, Black, Red, Aral, Adriatic ( or even Sargasso)...

Edited to add the Mediterranean, silly me... I know that is 9 options, but what the hell! Drop the North and Sargasso Sea and substitute the Mediterranean...

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

[Pontius Navigator]

Black, Red, Yellow and White.
Mediterranean, Ligurian, Tyrean, Adriatic, Agean, Caspian, Aral, Baltic, North, Irish, Caribbean, Arabian
Sargasso

[Undried Plum]

It's one of those mythical 7 numbers. Rather like the myth of the 7th wave being bigger than all the others.

Edinburgh is said to have been built on seven hills, like Rome. Anyone who's ever done any serious walking or cycling in Embra can attest that there's a hell of a lot more than seven hills! For some reason, most of 'em are uphill. Dunno how that works hypsographically.

[PHXPhlyer]

Amphidromic and hypsographically.
Up:
You are making me work Google overtime!
Thank you for the enlightenment.

PP

[Pontius Navigator]

I forgot the Sea of Cortez.

[TheGreenGoblin]

I forgot the Sea of Cortez.

John Steinbeck - The Log from the Sea of Cortez....


Ed Rickett's et al... one of my favourite books.

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL23188W/Sea_of_Cortez

Superb...

LSC.JPG (44.44 KiB) Viewed 957 times

[Pontius Navigator]

Then there was Jean Rhys with Wide Sargasso Sea. I read it at school and it cane up in the General exam.

My father also gave me a map of the world with all the ocean currents and trade winds. It might have been in Norries. That trans Atlantic aircraft are now catching the wind, or avoiding it, is no more than my father did at sea a 100 years ago. When you are doing 10kts, a 2kts current and less wind age means a lot.

In fact in 2005 our cruise on Artemis had to cancel a port as it was battling against the trades abs and could not make it. Quite funny one time really, I left my wife up on a forrad deck and went below for something. When I came up the deck was cleared and crews were recovering the sunbeds and lashing them down. We had come about and there was a strong head wind.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Then there was Jean Rhys with Wide Sargasso Sea. I read it at school and it cane up in the General exam.

My father also gave me a map of the world with all the ocean currents and trade winds. It might have been in Norries. That trans Atlantic aircraft are now catching the wind, or avoiding it, is no more than my father did at sea a 100 years ago. When you are doing 10kts, a 2kts current and less wind age means a lot.

In fact in 2005 our cruise on Artemis had to cancel a port as it was battling against the trades abs and could not make it. Quite funny one time really, I left my wife up on a forrad deck and went below for something. When I came up the deck was cleared and crews were recovering the sunbeds and lashing them down. We had come about and there was a strong head wind.

Personal question, but a pertinent one for a navigator, so please forgive me. Do you do a lot of sailing PN?

[Pontius Navigator]

As a passenger in a cruise ship

I still keep an eye out for where we are when flying or cruising.

Once, in one of Ex-A's chariots we were SLF on a flight to Singapore. The first leg was to Gander. Not many years before Transport Command used to circulate a map with current progress, eta and winds. On this trip we had nothing but we had a Daily Telegraph weather map and we kept a DR plot on that. In that cold hard light of dawn, a slate grey we could see stark white clouds below. Looking closer we thought they might be icebergs before identifying them as Greenland.
The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

[PHXPhlyer]

PP

[TheGreenGoblin]

As a passenger in a cruise ship

I still keep an eye out for where we are when flying or cruising.

Once, in one of Ex-A's chariots we were SLF on a flight to Singapore. The first leg was to Gander. Not many years before Transport Command used to circulate a map with current progress, eta and winds. On this trip we had nothing but we had a Daily Telegraph weather map and we kept a DR plot on that. In that cold hard light of dawn, a slate grey we could see stark white clouds below. Looking closer we thought they might be icebergs before identifying them as Greenland.
The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

Ah thanks PN.

A land based army navigational error perpetrated, not by me (for once), but by an up himself young SADF army lieutenant who took a fix on South using the Southern Cross, who then transposed that fix, onto the moon or some errant planet (or so it seemed to me). I said nothing as he became totally lost on a night march while we were doing basics. We finally got back but missed morning parade, but made breakfast, so everybody was happy, save for the navigationally challenged lieutenant who was roundly bollocked from on high, for becoming unsure of his position.

Twas one of you RAF lot that taught me to navigate by the stars as a boy scout. He was an ex-RAF navigator who flew for Luxair, his sons were fellow callow types alongside me, and lived in Johannesburg. Sadly he was made redundant and went on to become an art dealer in Rome. Lovely bloke who taught us all a lot.

@PHP - Blind Faith....

[Pontius Navigator]

I got joed for a night EnE exercise in Thetford Chase. I had a party of 5 airmen who had volunteered. It was a pitch black night, no lights no stars or starlight. We had been dropped off blind.

We had to find the RV. We managed to fix our position and then set off. I split the party into 3 pairs and used the sane technique as we had done on a jungle trek. I took a compass bearing on the lead pair and off we set. Every so often I swapped the front and back. Unfortunately one pair could not hold a course so the trail finding fell on just the other pair.
At midnight I called a halt and we went to ground. We were still spaced out so the rear pair could not see the lead pair. Just as we set off again the front pair were challenged and we all went to ground again.
Eventually we confirmed we had bumped onto another team of evaders who had chosen exactly the same spot to rest.
Says something about our navigation.
In fact, thinking back, of all the night evasion exercises, not one was in less than pitch dark.

[ian16th]

Do all Nav's fear being lost?

When 214 went to Luqa for a 6 week Exercise Sunspot, we had a spare crew flew in the Beverley with the ground crew. The Nav was the Sqdn Nav Leader and he spent the trip with a chart on his knee and peering out of the window.

It seemed the the Transport Command guy upstairs, with all his kit did quite a good job all on his own!

[Boac]

on om15's in gore list

Things are worse than I feared.

[TheGreenGoblin]

on om15's in gore list

Things are worse than I feared.

They said it couldn't get worse but, of course, it always did!

[ExSp33db1rd]

The first leg was to Gander. ............The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

Was that because he was headed to Gander en route to Singapore ?

............taught me to navigate by the stars..........

Talking about my past experience at the local Aero Club, a young student said '"What's a sextant ? " One could weep.

[TheGreenGoblin]

My experience of the grace, and intelligence, of RAF navigators, was borne out by my experience, while I was doing the ground exams for my instrument rating in London...

Ron, wherever you are now, I need you again..

[Pontius Navigator]

The first leg was to Gander. ............The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

Was that because he was headed to Gander en route to Singapore ?

............taught me to navigate by the stars..........

Talking about my past experience at the local Aero Club, a young student said '"What's a sextant ? " One could weep.

Yup, Gander, Offutt, Hawaii, Guam. Fortunately we went u/s at Hickham and night stopped there. Even so, when we arrived at Changhi I remember it was dark and the bus ride to Tengah was like driving on narrow country road. I remember little of the flight. We had breakfast at Waddington before departure, breakfast in Gander, late breakfast in Offutt, and Hawaii in time for tea. At some point we crossed the IDL and that really fouled up the aircraft flight logs back at base, especially as ATC at the airfields often mixed up the departure times and airframes.

[Boac]

At some point we crossed the IDL and that really fouled up the aircraft flight logs back at base,

??? Did base not understand Z?