I went to an interesting talk about navigation methods used at the time of the Mary Rose last night. It was given by Rear Admiral John Lippiett CB CBE DL no less, at the Royal Lymington Yacht Club and jointly hosted by the Royal Institute of Navigation. Talks don’t get much more pukka than that.
There were many gems that will find their way out in time, but for now, I’ll just quote part of Sir Francis Drake’s prayer, as it made an appearance last night. I had not come across it before and it’s brilliant:
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
….
The image above is of the Yacht Club at sunset. There are some unusual patterns in the water in the foreground and they’ll make perfect sense once you’ve read How to Read Water.
The image below is of HMS Blazer, which was moored alongside the club, so that the crew could join us for the talk.
