Today we went to the London Maritime Museum hoping to see the way they are commemorating the slave trade this year, much to our disappointment and frustration again we were faced with its gallery being closed until 2008. Apparently it had been open early this year but it was being ‘re-done’, it made me wonder if there had been any problem with the original and if so what is their reinterpretation going to look like, unfortunately I did not get the chance to ask.

We were set the task of choosing an object or picture in the museum that we think best reflects nautical science and navigation. The museum was filled with many old navigational instruments. The object I chose was an Arabic celestial globe, as being able to navigate by the stars was so fundamental to early navigation and without instruments like this exploration would have never developed at the rate it did. I think it also visually illustrates how much the planet is connected to the universe and to have a greater understanding of our planet and how to navigate it relies on us having a greater understanding of the cosmos. Arab cultures inherited much of their knowledge of astronomy from ancient Greeks and on this globe 48 constellations have been taken from Arabic translations of the 2^nd century Greek author Ptolemy. Illuminating that developments in navigation involved societies turning to each other others and a sharing of ideas. After the museum we went to the Greenwich Observatory, where the meridian line of longitude is. Learning about how to calculate longitude made ‘the penny drop’ as it were to why the maritime museum had so many sundials and their significance to navigation.

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