Did you know that during the heydays of piracy on the high seas, when beards were famous and boards were walked, a pirate ship was a roiling pit of Geometry?
On ships made of wood and often on the run from the navy, it’s no surprise that a carpenter was a crucial member of the crew. Not just good proper carpenters but innovative ones. A pirate ship’s carpenter needed to make do with makeshift materials and difficult conditions. Like any carpenter for millennia before them, they were very dependent on instruments like plumb lines or plum bob and a carpenter’s square (or try-square). This is a right-angle of wood or metal used to properly square off pieces of wood. It has been found in use all the way from ancient Egypt to your current carpenter’s work bag. It’s also very similar to the triangles or set squares you had in your school geometry set.
The cooper, who made and repaired barrels, and the quartermaster, who was second only to the captain and divided the loot, both needed mathematical knowledge, but the most geometrically adept on board had to be the Navigator. You try finding your way around the Earth with no GPS on the open sea. The navigator had to make precise measurements and calculations based on maps, the stars, and scarce landmarks, for navigating the ship across the oceans.
In their tool box in the olden days was a jacob’s staff or cross staff, a precise graduated bar with a sliding crossbar to determine the angle between the horizon and stars. In later times, more precise instruments like the sextant were used. Sextants were called that because they had a circular arc for measuring angles which was 60 degrees wide. Sextant is latin for 1/6th (of a circle). Add two more of the 60 degree arcs and you get the protractor in your geometry box again. The divider in that same box came straight from the navigator’s arsenal for measuring distances on maps and charts.
We’re not saying a pirate ship was a house of scholars, of course. Nothing of the sort. There are people who killed and plundered after all. But keep in mind that they ran most of their decisions democratically, and the two kinds of crew who they often kidnapped to work on ships, because they were so valuable, were good navigators and musicians.
Read other interesting stories of stationery and its origin on the links below,
- This ancient ritualistic game of the Olmecs forms the gory backstory of one of the most common pieces of stationery we all use: the humble eraser – https://inkymemo.com/olmecs-rubber-people/
- In genteel English society of the time, calling cards took over as an etiquette fad, and reached the level of social obsession. Read more about the Victorian Calling Cards – https://inkymemo.com/the-weird-history-of-victorian-calling-cards/
