The Navigator

I'm currently reading a book on sailing navigation. That may sound boring, but, in a certain sense, it is really a history of mankind. Though we may now use GPS and Satnav to guide us and many large sailing vessels now have laptops as part of their standard equipment, navigation was once romantic. The telescope and the sextant were developed by people seeking to solve navigation problems. The history of navigation is a history of geometry, cartography, and engineering. The good sailor is also an astronomer and a meteorologist. Before cars and airplanes sailors were the explorers of the world, the boldest of adventurers.
The image of the captain standing over charts and plotting a course is familiar to all of use from childrens' books of the sea life. Pirates and merchant marines, explorers and military clashes. These are fires for the imagination. I have a sudden urge to find a book from the Horatio Hornblower series so I can sit back and dream of a less cynical world.