All Questions
Tagged with age-of-discovery navigation
5 questions
10
votes
1
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905
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How close did a Manila galleon ever come to Hawaii?
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, Manila galleons sailed regularly between Mexico and the Philippines. Consistent ocean currents informed their clockwise route. After the Spanish had ...
user18968
0
votes
2
answers
291
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Independent development of ocean navigation
I am wondering about who can reasonably claim to independently have developed navigating oceans. It is quite clear that the Iberians had the technology around 1500; and that the proto-Polynesians had ...
- 1,185
2
votes
1
answer
2k
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How did sailing technology improve during the Age of Sail? [closed]
Wikipedia article on the Middle Passage says:
while an average transatlantic journey of the early 16th century lasted several months, by the 19th century the crossing often required fewer than six ...
- 121
60
votes
4
answers
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Why did Columbus cross the mid-Atlantic instead of exploring from Greenland?
Greenland was known to Europe since long before 1492. In fact, Leif Erikson reached modern Canadian lands around the year 1000, coming from Greenland. That journey was forgotten, but he chose a ...
- 17.3k
6
votes
1
answer
853
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How did Vasco da Gama know about the Southern Cross?
It is said that the precession cycle of the Earth's axis takes about 26,000 years to complete. It is also said that the ancient Greeks could see Crux (aka the Southern Cross) from where they lived. It ...
- 3,445