Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Rincon Astrolabe Shipwreck

The Rincon Astrolabe Shipwreck

Garcia, Gustavo

Paperback

Anthropology

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 3843355916
ISBN13: 9783843355919
Publisher: Lap Lambert Academic Pub
Published: Sep 24 2010
Pages: 104
Weight: 0.36
Height: 0.25 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
On 30 December 1986, a fisherman incidentally discovered the remains of a seventeenth-century merchantman off the coast of Rincón, a small municipality on Puerto Rico's west coast. Among the objects recovered from the site was a nautical astrolabe. This book presents a study on the sea or mariner's astrolabe, a navigation instrument that played a fundamental role in the process of European maritime expansion. During the fifteenth century, Portuguese navigators saw the need to gradually depart from the traditional Mediterranean navigation technique known as dead reckoning. As their explorations along the West African coast forced them to sail far into the Atlantic Ocean, a new method was developed that consisted of measuring the angle of certain heavenly bodies above the horizon in order to determine the latitude of the observer. For this purpose, instruments that traditionally belonged to the field of astronomy were adapted by seamen. Among them was the astrolabe, which became the most popular by the turn of the sixteenth century.

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