Convoy to Morocco by Terry Mort

Author:Terry Mort
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AFTER DINNER I WENT TO THE BRIDGE. IT WAS JUST THAT TIME OF fading light when the stars were coming out, but you could still see the horizon. That was the time for taking a star sighting and fixing the ship’s position. You did that by using a sextant to measure the angles of a few reliable stars. It was a problem in spherical geometry. I remembered studying celestial navigation in officer training, and the first time I worked out a solution to a classroom problem, my calculations located my “ship” somewhere high and dry in the Catskill Mountains of New York, not in Long Island Sound, which was the correct school solution. But over time I got better at it. You took the measure of at least three stars by locating them in the sextant optics and then moving them down to the horizon with the sextant’s protractor-like device that marked the angle of each. Then you consulted the tables, and when you had the information about those stars’ positions for that day, you drew the angles on the chart, and where those lines intersected was your position. You knew where you were because the heavens said so. It was very satisfying, when the lines all crossed at exactly the same point. It had to make you smile for a number of reasons. There you were, a human microbe in a microbe of a vessel, alone on an endless sea, asserting not only that you were a part of the universe, but also that your position in it was precisely here on this imaginary spot on the water. There might be lost souls in the world, but you were not one of them. Well done. But at those times I also thought of the lines from Steven Crane—“The man said to the Universe, ‘Sir I exist!’ And the Universe replied, ‘Yes, but that does not create in me a sense of obligation.’” That might not be the exact quote, but it’s close enough—much like my star plots. Celestial navigation made you feel cosmically insignificant and at the same time pleased with yourself for being able to use the stars that way. For that brief moment, they were your tools. You asked them a question, and they were made to answer. Their light had started their travels to you a thousand light years ago, just to do you this favor, or so it seemed. The star that had sent that light might not even exist anymore, might have burnt out or exploded a million years ago. But you were using the last of its light to find and mark your position. Then, necessarily, the ship continued to move and so did the stars, so that your brief moment of self-assertion, knowledge, and mastery was exactly that—brief. And if that didn’t make you smile ruefully and wryly, well, you were missing a big part of the experience. The whole thing was a metaphor, of course—a complicated one, to be sure, but they’re usually the best kind.

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