"Present day navigators are apt to place so much reliance on mechanical and tabular aids that we sometimes forget that primitive peoples were able to voyage over a large part of the world without any such devices. A study of these primitive methods shows that there are many valuable aids we have neglected or forgotten, and that a continued reliance on mechanical aids places us in a very helpless position when deprived of them. In the lore of the sea and the sky one can still find those fundamental and simple means which gave early man confidence and enabled him to find his way on the trackless seas."
So wrote the 20
th-century’s master navigator of both
sky and sea,
Harold Gatty (1903-1957), in his beguiling
The Raft Book. Last fall, the United States Naval Academy reintroduced
the requirement of a formal course in celestial navigation after an absence of nearly
two decades from the curriculum. At that time, this nifty publication, its
title and author unknown to me, needed to be cataloged for the National Air
& Space Museum Library’s special collections.
The book’s covers are blue heavy paper stock, embossed in
silver with a majestic, soaring albatross upon a field of stars. Within its original
slipcase are also two large folding leaves containing tables for navigation
computations, scales for measuring distance ("Greenwich date and hour
scales”) and a unique world-wide chart. What librarian could resist a survival
book that first acknowledges one of its own, C. R. Taylor of the Alexander
Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand? Isn’t my profession all about
navigating through an ocean of information?
While an interesting, well-illustrated, carefully thought-out,
and concise specimen of book production,
The
Raft Book is both a training manual (on shore) and a survival guide (at
sea). An errata slip in the first edition of 1943 states: “For service use in
rafts and lifeboats the book will be waterproofed and will have spiral plastic
binding. The book and charts will be contained in a waterproofed envelope.”
It directs the reader to always carry a pocket
watch set to Greenwich Time in order to determine longitude. How to protect
that valuable piece?: “get a rubber sack (obtainable from pharmacist) for it
and keep it dry.”
 |
| "Harold Gatty instructs an Air Corps officer in the use of the drift indicator he invented" National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (link here) |
Gatty wrote
The Raft
Book here in Washington, D. C., at
the behest of the U. S. Army Air Forces for pilots flying over the Pacific, and
perhaps always with an eye toward others such as fishermen and sailors. He is
the sole author and, with his (second) wife, the copyright holder, not the U. S.
Government. Gatty was ideally suited for the
task. He had
first learned
navigation as a midshipman at the Royal Australian Naval College and
then celestial
wayfaring by his own observations stargazing on long voyages
. Landing in California, Gatty taught marine
navigation to yachtsmen at his own school in Los Angeles before taking on the
challenges of charting routes in the skies with both celestial navigation and
dead reckoning.
Philip Van Horn Weems became his mentor at his navigational
school in San Diego and the two had a long collaboration.
Gatty was navigator to pilot
Wiley Post during their world
record circumnavigation of the globe in 1931. Touching down in Roosevelt Field
on Long Island, having bested the 21-day record set by the airship
Graf Zeppelin, they were feted with an
exuberant ticker-tape parade that only New York City can provide. The two wrote
Around the world in eight days: the flight of the Winnie Mae, with an introduction by Will Rogers. They rivaled
Charles Lindbergh in popularity. Post, the high-altitude aviator in the Golden
Age of Aviation who discovered the jet stream, and Rogers, humorist, writer,
social commentator, and actor, were killed together in 1935 when their plane
crashed in the Territory of Alaska.
 |
| Lockheed Vega "Winnie Mae" National Air and Space Museum |
Not as well remembered today is the innovative, resourceful
Gatty whom Lindbergh anointed the “Prince of Navigators.” Roscoe Turner, Anne
Morrow Lindbergh, Clyde Pangborne, Howard Hughes, Arthur Goebel, Harold
Bromley, and Pan American Airways all turned to Gatty for his expertise and
advice. In 1932 he was appointed Senior Aerial Navigation
Engineer for the U. S. Army Air Corps.
Of special value to the military at
the start of World War II in the vast, still largely uncharted Pacific was
Gatty’s long study of Polynesian seafaring skills over millennia. In The
Raft Book, Gatty laid out simple and practical methods of determining
location and charting a course to shore in a lifeboat or dinghy without a map
and compass. The book describes how Polynesians viewed the stars as moving
bands of light. “They knew the stars which passed over particular islands, and
used these stars as heavenly beacons to lead them to their destination.” Along
with the ability to measure distance from the Equator by either the North Star
or the Southern Cross and other celestial bodies, the author explains how all
the senses were to be employed for survival with the “lore of the sea and sky.”
For example, Gatty describes how
seafarers should pay attention to the light at dawn, the appearance of clouds,
and the currents and wave patterns of the ocean. In addition, familiarity with
the habits of sea and land birds, fishes and insects can be used as
navigational aids, and will enable a hungry castaway to more easily catch these
creatures for food when necessary. Less obvious senses can have an essential
role in survival on the ocean, as well. Such as being alert to scent: “I have
personally experienced the fragrance of new-mown hay 80 miles off the New
Zealand coast in the springtime.” And sounds from land: “The roar of
heavy surf may be heard long before the shore is seen. At night, the continued
cries of sea-birds from one particular direction will signify their
roosting place on land.” Looking at the directions of the wind, waves, and
swells, can also be aids for a castaway. Understanding the color of the sea and
even testing the temperature of the water with one's fingers are also part of the "lore" in the book.
Other editions of The Raft Book—in
a smaller type, with fewer of the colored plates, less of a lyrical cover, and
waterproofed—soon became part of the survival kits of all Allied airmen serving
in the Pacific Ocean theater. The publication portrays the world’s oceans not as
indifferent or hostile but teeming with life, with routes voyaged for centuries
by many cultures, including the Phoenicians, the Arabians, and the Vikings.
Gatty conveyed his deep knowledge of using the sea and sky and their movements
to find one’s way to land, interspersed with quotes from Shakespeare, Dante,
and William Cullen Bryant, not at all pretentiously but to underline a
particular lesson.
Now do I lay the bows of my canoe
To
the rising of the Sun, nor deviate from there
Straight
to the land, to the Fatherland
Ancient Maori Karakia
Post-war, Gatty continued to chart his own course in life. Despite
various U. S. military appointments and honors, he kept his Tasmanian
citizenship (Congress had to pass special bills to accommodate his request to
remain an un-naturalized citizen despite his official positions). Gatty found
his way to Fiji, where he owned the island of Katafanga, ran a plantation, served
in the Legislature, created Fiji Airlines, and continued to study ancient
wayfaring. Gatty’s last work,
Nature is your guide, was published posthumously. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in
August 1957.
Gatty’s The Raft Book, as perhaps the U. S. Navy has discovered, is
still relevant today as we have become ever-more reliant on high-tech
instruments, on land in a car, out at sea in a boat, and in the skies in an
aircraft. Increasingly dependent on sophisticated but vulnerable technology, know
that one can still be one’s own navigator.
Julia Blakely, Special Collections Cataloger
Johnston, Andrew K., Roger D. Connor, Carlene E. Stephens,
and Paul E. Ceruzzi. Time and navigation:
the untold story of getting from here to there. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Books, 2015.
Winnie Mae Newsreels
US Army Air Corps Avigation Training
![Letter written July 25, 1861 by President Abraham Lincoln regarding a proposal to use Thaddeus S. C. Lowe's balloons for observation of enemy positions during the Civil War. Text reads: "Will Lieut Gen. Scott please see Professor Lowe once more about his balloon? [signed] A. Lincoln. Jul. 25, 1861."](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC_LpaQcmPpS5dpp7yncX_ISpf0fiFVWD7Tl2fORk7wmNpGpWUpHxKRxMMbgqvF0rljUMxysjPHdec0L3NM22KfSrvIMCL3FJ_w6JQrFpCpY2iEGYgeCe76YmhenG31tf8K9QcHKvBBrw/s1600/SI-99-40777.JPG)
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