A History Of Navigation, In Verse

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In the beginning was the hallowed cross staff.

And while your friends might giggle and laugh

Who saw you staring into the sun,

You at least knew your latitude when done.

An improvement was the nifty back staff.

And while your friends might still giggle and laugh,

(Why are friends so often that way?)

From the sun you could now turn away.

Let us not forgot the clumsy quadrant,
As unwieldy as a fire hydrant.

Its users would stumble and trip

On the deck of a rolling ship.

Equally painful was the neat astrolabe

For while latitude it neatly gabe,
If you also required your longitude,

The astrolabe wasn't singing your song, dude.

And even the touted sextant,

The most complex device yet extant,

For measuring the height of the sun,

Left you equally lost, when done.

For these devices, simple or devious,
All had a failing mischievious.

If you cared to return to the dock,

Then you also required a clock.

The Englishman, John Harrison,

Sought the longitude prize, but never won.
Still, they gave him an outrageous sum

For a clock with no pendulum.

So the scourge of old sailing fables,

The sextant, the clock, and the tables,

Navigation, remained a morass.

A colossal pain in the brass.

Until finally, God made GPS

Which did away with that awful old mess.

At long last man would be free

To venture safe upon the sea.

Today, the old navigators' art

Requires neither math nor chart.

We may voyage from Sundays to Saturdays,

If we remember to bring the batturays.

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