I find that most amazing of all. Ships rely so much on gizmos that they are taken entirely for granted. When they fail, because they can and do, they have to fall back on the basic tools and methods of seamanship that conquered the seas. There is manpower aboard to do both. Ships can have crewmen stand watch on deck, scanning the horizons, while their gizmos do the same. They’re always going to need eyes on deck to catch anything the gizmos can’t.
“I find that most amazing of all. Ships rely so much on gizmos that they are taken entirely for granted. When they fail, because they can and do, they have to fall back on the basic tools and methods of seamanship that conquered the seas. There is manpower aboard to do both. Ships can have crewmen stand watch on deck, scanning the horizons, while their gizmos do the same. They’re always going to need eyes on deck to catch anything the gizmos can’t.”
I taught a Junior Navigation course for United States Power Squadrons a couple of years ago and had a graphic demonstration of this. Each student was supposed to find his position by using a sextant, clock, Nautical Almanac, calculator and chart. In each case the student made his observations from a known position that wad clearly marked on the chart, meaning it was the accurate position and anything else, like a GPS position, would be inaccurate. Nevertheless, one or two students used GPS positions as the real location, instead of the charted one, and, for that reason, got their final positions wrong.