Sailing School - Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800

Hands-on science in the Age of Exploration.

Winner of the John Lyman Book Award in Naval and Maritime Science and Technology by the North American Society for Oceanic History and the Leo Gershoy Prize by the American Historical Association

Throughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial navigation. They developed schools, textbooks, and instruments to teach the new mathematical techniques to sailors. As these experts debated the value of theory and practice, memory and mathematics, they created hybrid models that would have a lasting impact on applied science.

In Sailing School, a richly illustrated comparative study of this transformative period, Margaret E. Schotte charts more than two hundred years of navigational history as she investigates how mariners solved the challenges of navigating beyond sight of land. She begins by outlining the influen