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Fri 29 Jul, 2011 01:11 am
Context:
TREASURE ISLAND - PART ONE
The Old Buccaneer
1
The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
@oristarA,
Bearings are map directions used to "plot a course" to sail from point A to point B. BEarings, during the time of Treasure ISland, were plotted based upon magnetic compass directions and by dead reckoning using polar coordinates landmarks.
They wanted to keep the directions secret because there was still much treasure to be removed. REmember , this was written by the main character"Squire "HArkins" as an intro AFTER the events of the story had already taken place
@farmerman,
More generally spoken: a bearing is the situation of one place from another, with regard to the points of the compass.
It's also the situation of any distant object, estimated from some part of the ship, according to her situation; these latter bearings are either "on the beam", "before the beam", "abaft the beam", "lee" or "luff", "ahead" or "astern" ...
@Walter Hinteler,
Nowadays we would speak of "coordinates", that is, latitude and longitude.
But I bow to fm's greater knowledge of archaic navigational methods.
Robert Louis Stevenson was Scottish, you know.
@McTag,
Latitude and longitude give the position, the place where the bearing is = you make a bearing to get your position.
That was used with "archaic" and is used with "modern" navigational methods.
But, of course, you have to know the coordinates of bearing ...
(If you believe someone, who only got three months schooling at the "Department of Navigation", Naval Operations Academy.)
Bearings derives from the sense of to bear which means to have a relationship to. The term has been in use in English for several centuries, and long before there was any reliable method of finding longitude. How to find one's latitude (although not with precision) has been known literally for thousands of years.
Bearings do not refer to latitude and longitude except coincidentally (you were correct in your original statement, Walter). They are always a relative statement of one's position in regard to any fixed point, or any point to which one wished to travel. If you are in the Solent off Yarmouth, then Portsmouth bears east-north-east a half east. If you are in the East River opposite Kipps Bay, Staten Island bears west-south-west. A bearing is always expressed as the relationship of your position to the place you want to go.
Before reliably accurate navigation, mariners relied heavily on visible landmarks to get their bearings and so set their course. An Icelander a thousand years ago who wished to visit Greenland would either leave from Breidafjordur (a bay in northwest Iceland), or sail there to get his bearings. With Snæfellsjökull ("Ice Fells--or Snow Fells--Glacier") over one's stern, one can sail due west and reach the coast of Greenland, even at the relative slow speed of five knots, one day after "sinking" Snæfellsjökull. The glacier is visible at sea for 120 miles or more, so a sailor can stand at his tiller, facing aft, and keep his course with Snæfellsjökull immediately astern until he "sinks" it, which is to say until it sinks beneath the horizon and is not longer visible. He can then turn around and keep a course due west, and, winds permitting, he will make the coast of Greenland one day after sinking Snæfellsjökull.
That is exactly how Erik Reudi (Erik the Red) got his bearings when he lead the first colonizing expedition from Iceland to Greenland in 985.
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