Hiss!

Hiss!

All our

navigation

systems

FAILED!

As Captain of the ship, I needed to

act fast. I must complete the voyage without any of the passengers finding out we had lost our GPS.

I calmed the passengers, who were celebrating Christmas, telling them the bang was a minor issue in the kitchen, and all was now well. More Christmas puddings all round!

Now, without any modern equipment, I needed to complete our voyage, using the method sailors had used for centuries... before the compass, before the sextant, before computers... I needed to:

Navigate by the Stars!

I hurried to my stack of navigation books and furiously looked for any information.

Finally, I found Star Navigation!

I memorised the old techniques and fetched the crew. I told them what to do...

First, I asked the crew to find the

North Star or Polaris. That's the star

that never changes its position in the Northern Hemisphere, so you always know North, then you can work out

the other directions.

Here's how to find Polaris in Winter, using the constellations of Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia:

Even though the other stars seem to rotate, Polaris stays the same! In the

clear skies at sea, it was easy to find.

Then I asked them to look for Orion,

the Hunter. He rises in the East and

sets in the West, like a Sun at night.

Following him West could be useful.

Then I asked them to measure how many widths of their finger(s) it took to get from the horizon to the North Star when we held out our arms. Each finger width is around one degree of latitude. There were around 52 finger widths. That meant 52 degrees latitude.

We knew were at around 5 degrees longitude, just west of Greenwich, which is 0 degrees. So we knew our coordinates were:

52,5

This was approximately the correct latitude for Newfoundland, so we quickly turned the ship due west, as we must not go any further south.

Sailing west into the open sea, we had no landmarks around us once we passed Ireland. There would be another five or six days before we would reach our destination. I hoped we would be able to make it.

As we continued west, we kept the rising sun behind us (knowing that was due East), and the setting sun in front (due West). We also checked Orion's path at night.

We observed the stars at night, checking our position against the constellations in the western sky, including Andromeda, Perseus and Pegasus, and kept the North Star to starboard (our right).

On New Year's Eve, as the passengers enjoyed the ship's party, and with

one day to go, I noticed some

Atlantic Puffins fishing near the ship. My heart leapt. I knew they lived around Newfoundland.

We were nearing land!

Next morning, on New Year's Day,

I woke to the ship's watchman shouting 'Land ahoy!'

We had arrived!

I washed, put on my uniform and combed my hair. I walked calmly to the deck, then steered the ship into Petty Harbour, Newfoundland.

The crew breathed a sigh of relief.

The passengers departed to Canada, after a great cruise, not knowing anything had gone wrong. And actually, nothing had gone wrong!

The crew and I stayed aboard a while,

to drink to the New Year – and to

thank our...

Lucky Stars!