It Takes Balls to Navigate
I'm reading a somewhat odd book at the moment: A People's History of Science.* As you might surmise, the book has an attitude and a rather overt agenda but, aside from occasional philosophical inconsistencies on the part of the author, it's more interesting than annoying so far.
At any rate, the author was talking about the remarkable achievements of Pacific-Islanders when it came to navigating their ocean-going vessels across the broad, featureless expanses of the Pacific Ocean in prehistoric times (in the chapter called "Were Hunter-Gatherers Stupid?" — detect the attitude yet?). Quite a bit has been discovered about how they were able to navigate using, predominantly, observation of the stars at night and the sun at times during the day.
But when those techniques weren't available, navigators are said to have "read the swells". Ocean swells, you see, are the undulations in the ocean's surface that are the vestiges of very, very distant, wind-driven waves. Particularly in the Pacific, swells are generally consistent in their direction of origin, so if one can detect their direction of propagation, one can determine orientation with reasonable precision. Apparently, those who were adept at reading the swells could also detect perturbations due to nearby bodies of land — another aide to locating all those little islands.
He notes, via another book,# that "One Westerm seaman reported:"
I have heard from several sources, that the most sensitive balance was a man's testicles, and that when at night or when the horizon was obscured, or inside the cabin this was the method used to find the focus of the swells off an island.
Would it be churlish of me to point out that despite the reference to "this method", no method of using the testicles as a "most sensitive balance" is actually presented here? Does the "most sensitive" method involve only one person, or are more required? Are the testicles still attached to the man in question? How sensitive is it? Is observation visual or tactile?
My interest is purely scientific, of course.
———-
*Clifford D. Conner, A People's History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and "Low Mechanicks" (New York: Nation Books, 2005).
#David Lewis, We the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
3 Responses
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Subscribe to comments via RSS
Leave a Reply
To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Friday, 5 May 2006 at 18.55
Permalink
Pardon my deep skepticism, but reading swells strikes me as a mighty stretch.
Unless some form of surgery or mutilation is involved, I suspect what the writer should've said was scrotum, not testicles.
While I try to maintain faith that anything's possible, the reach to accept scrotum navigation is just too far. Even if it ever could be done once, somehow, it's not something any sane sailor would rely on. There are too many variables involved. Really cold weather would render readings virtually impossible.
on Friday, 5 May 2006 at 19.01
Permalink
Not to mention the ill effects of cold water. It does, however, lend new meaning to the concept of navigating by "the seat of one's pants". I'll obviously have to do more research and report back.
on Tuesday, 17 July 2007 at 17.26
Permalink
The history of Scrotum Navigation was well documented in South Sea Islander lore and history.
Scrotum Navigation was used successfully by South Sea Islanders to determine if they had crossed into a new current or not. Subtle temperature differences were dicerned by whether the navigators testicals rose or decended in the scrotum.
The waters of the South Pacific are typically warm. Experienced navigators knew which currents took them where. The temperature differences between these current were often slight. To detect current changes the Navigator would walk out on the outrigger and dangle his most sensitive temperature measuring equipment in the water and if his testicals rose, the water was cooler. If they decended, the water was warmer. This was much more accurate than placing any other part of the anatomy in the water.
Captain Don —