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Jeff

* wrote, On 3/14/2007 10:07 AM:
* Milton Waddams wrote
With everyone going on about Roman, Phoenician and Egyptian sailors
one would think they invented sailing. The greatest sailors were the
Polynesians. They had the fastest boats and ranged over the greatest
area of sea. They were also the best navigators, all without compass,
astrolabs and telescopes.

Uh huh. So, if they were such great sailors then why did they not
continue to make progress with their vessels and open trade routes to
the other civilizations on the continents?

Maybe they weren't interested in trade? It really wasn't a strong
part of their culture.

Jeff wrote:
I certainly wouldn't argue with the nomination of the Polynesians as
#1.

I would.

They made some great voyages, true. But how many of their navigators
got lost at sea? About half, maybe more?

This is total speculation. I might guess that small vessels explored,
perhaps with mixed results, but that the larger vessels had a better
idea as to where they were going.

All we know is that a couple
of great canoes did make successful voyages across long stretches of
the Pacific. I would suggest that for every one that made it, there
was at least one other that didn't.

I'm not sure what your claiming. Are your saying it only counts as
great sailors if they only sailed safe and comfortable boats? By that
standard, the most capable cruisers nowadays use the Crystal Line.

And they did not continue to
progress toward longer & more successful voyages. They made some
migrations among the islands and called it a day.

The chart of the Eastern Pacific looks pretty empty to me. Which
sailors would have crossed that before 1300? The Europeans didn't get
to the Azores until after 1300.

OTOH with all the beautiful Polynesian women on the island why would a
sane man leave home to go voyaging anyway?

They had a problem that they would systematically destroy the ecology
on an island, and then over-population forced them to move on.

..... But, you should also give credit to the Norse, as well as their
predecessors (some call them the Albans) who sailed the North Seas to
Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland, originally in hide covered
boats. Up there, of course, a compass wasn't much good.

They also covered a good part of the Cathay trade route via the
Russian rivers. That's how they came to the attention of the Byzantine
Emperor who recruited Vikings for his personal bodyguard.

And also the Basque were probably fishing off New England a hundred
years before Columbus.

Yep.

Getting back to the Phoenicians & Romans, how about Hanno's
circumnavigation of Africa?

I suppose I'll have to read up on Hanno and his predecessors, its been
a while. But working your way down a coastline is just a bit easier
than striking out across a few thousand miles of open water.