Arcadia Discussion Zone

After checking, none of my copys of paintings of La Rochelle Harbour are from the 14th century.

You might find this page interesting.... even if you don't understand the French there are lots of great pictures, paintings, maps and diagrams.


Bataille de La Rochelle – 1371


http://www.colleurs-de-plastique.com/fo ... -navire%85

LES TEMPLIERS DE LA ROCHELLE
http://www.insolite.asso.fr/templiers/rochelle.htm

i'm not following this thread, but if you have specific questions that i can track down answers for on the French search engines, just write them down & i'll give it a go....it's -18° Centigrade outside and i'm getting snow blindness with wading around in the dratted whitestuff...so i'll take any excuse to come indoors and de-frost my toes.

I heard it's a little extreme out there at the mo. One of my friends is snowed in at Buragach village for the last 2 days

Extreme is a good description Davinho.... it's not been this cold here since '93...we had -24° C last night and there's more snow forecast for tomorrow....we can handle it but i have a lot of animals under my care...so have to be vigilant. The only operational vehicule is the brave little Quad... tractors, forget 'em !

Listening to the complete Topographic Oceans at blistering volume...big heads up and a thank you to Pilrig

and there was Hans wanting to go climbing this month

Sounds like the perfect time for you to do a "Clovis Dardentor" translation for us!

Both of those links are great Sheila, Thanks

you guys must be getting all our cold, we have been quite a bit warmer than normal. Actually, not much of a winter here at all. My daughter has donkeys, and between them and our horses, they are loving it.---Bill

A Claude glass (or black mirror) is a small mirror, slightly convex in shape, with its surface tinted a dark colour. Bound up like a pocket-book or in a carrying case, black mirrors were used by artists, travellers and connoisseurs of landscape and landscape painting. Black Mirrors have the effect of abstracting the subject reflected in it from its surroundings, reducing and simplifying the colour and tonal range of scenes and scenery to give them a painterly quality.

Claude Lorrain interests me for a mutiple reasons but that he knew Poussin and he knew Bourdan

here is his repentant Magdalene
http://www.claudelorrain.org/Landscape-with-the-Repentant-Magdalene-large.html

...........just re-reading The Golden Thread of Time pages 227-228



...............this knowledge was universal amongst the ancients of our world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Orion was the great navigator, a moment in time and G-d on Earth, in ancient days. His position in the sky heralded Taurus the great Bull, the constellation that was required for transatlantic passages by the navigators of those distant times.

The Rules for following a star across the Atlantic

1- Follow a star that is over 17*latitude at 17*altitude and head south west following the course of that star using triangulation methods.

2- Keep watch with an hourglass using Las Palmas time that was acquired from the local watcher before departure.

3- Keep the ship's watch with a separate hourglass on observed local time against Las Palmas time.

4- Take 22.00 sightings on the Pleiades.

5- Take midnight sightings on Orion.

6- Take noon sun sightings, using the laws of equal altitude to find true south.

7- Take lunar sightings if available.

8- Subtract Las Palmas time from the ship's local time and calculate position of longitude.

9- Check speed through the water using dead reckoning as a support to astro navigation.

10- Estimate speed of current.

11- Mark estimated position (EP) on vellum chart and update daily.

12- Maintain log.

13- Continuously monitor the ship's latitude against 17*latitude.

14- On reaching the latitude of 17* turn westward and follow that line of latitude without deviation.

15- Consult an almanac for stars that should be due south of your position at other times of night.

16- Arrive successfully at Nelson's Dockyard in Antigua at 17*latitude.


The return journey would not be made until the spring and would then take a route around the north side of the Sargasso Sea, via the Gulf Stream and The North Atlantic Drift. They would arrive on the North European coastline anywhere from the Outer Hebrides to Lisbon depending on the starting latitude and the star they followed. If the navigator departed from the Caribbean and sailed North on the Gulf Stream along the eastern seaboard of America until he reached the latitude of 46*N, the ship would end up located at Scatarie Island off the coast of Cape Breton in Newfoundland. By following the 46*latitude line east, the ship would avoid the Sargasso Sea and arrive at La Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay on the coast of France.

Does Miller explain in practical detail how the various techniques above were applied to position determination?

I can see he is describing techniques which would potentially yield relative longitude by hour angle measurement, latitude by meridian passage and south heading by meridian passage of sun and Orion.

How was declination of heavenly bodies determined (needed for latitude calculation - except when Polaris was used)?

But how reliable would an hour glass be? (Obviously, poor ol' Mr. Harrison needn't have spent a lifetime of tribulation perfecting an accurate and reliable chronometer.)

How would a south westerly (as specified above) heading be determined in between meridian passage observations? (During the daylight hours only the sun and the moon, if visible, could be used once each.)

Was "rough enough, good enough" for all these measurements?

Putting aside the crude methods of measurement, the application of the above techniques require a sophisticated understanding of the operation of the solar system and basic geometry. I presume this is one of Miller's contentions?

They had the Gulf Stream ...the Conveyor belt to aid them

Franklin noticed mail got to America two weeks later than it got to England



They were aware of the gulf stream

Hi Lovuian,
What year is this map dated? Would be interesting to compare where the Gulf stream is now compared to that older map. Last year and especially this year we have had a shift in position. This year instead of the usual position of brushing Newfoundland it has come about two hundred miles further south and instead of passing between Shetland and Greenland it is passing over the British Isles. Hence the wet summer.

Dang sorry I left the link out
it was in 1770

As deputy postmaster of the British American colonies, Benjamin Franklin became interested in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns. In 1768, while in England, Franklin heard a curious complaint from the Colonial Board of Customs: Why did it take British packets several weeks longer to reach New York from England than it took an average American merchant ship to reach Newport, Rhode Island, despite the merchant ships leaving from London and having to sail down the River Thames and then the length of the English Channel before they sailed across the Atlantic, while the packets left from Falmouth in Cornwall?[4]

Franklin asked his cousin Timothy Folger, a Nantucket whaling captain, for an answer and Folger explained that merchant ships routinely crossed the then-unnamed Gulf Stream—identifying it by whale behavior, measurement of the water's temperature and the speed of bubbles on its surface, and changes in the water's color—while the mail packet captains ran against it.[4] Franklin worked with Folger and other experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the Gulf Stream and giving it the name by which it is still known today. He offered this information to Anthony Todd, secretary of the British Post Office, but it was ignored by British sea captains.[4]

Franklin's Gulf Stream chart was published in 1770 in England, where it was mostly ignored.[5] Subsequent versions were printed in France in 1778 and the U.S. in 1786.[6] It took many years for the British to follow Franklin's advice on navigating the current but once they did, they were able to gain two weeks in sailing time.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

Ben Franklin was a poly math like Da Vinci

guess what James
a coincidence


Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street, in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706

January 17 is the day of Blue Apples at Rennes
Saints Roseline Saint Sulpicius and Saint Anthony
feast day


European discovery of the Gulf Stream dates to the 1513 expedition of Juan Ponce de León, after which it became widely used by Spanish ships sailing from the Caribbean to Spain.

A summary of Ponce de León's voyage log, on April 22, 1513, noted, "A current such that, although they had great wind, they could not proceed forward, but backward and it seems that they were proceeding well; at the end it was known that the current was more powerful than the wind."[2] Its existence was also known to Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, and to Sir Humphrey Gilbert at that time.

Where have I heard that saying before?

"In hoc signo vinces".

Hi Lovuian,
A very interesting insight as to how Europeans navigated the Americas, thank you. The BF stuff is really interesting. I wonder if he was really born on January 17th or there was some sort of intervention via masonic rite. It seems that on more than one occasion peoples birth dates have been changed in order to follow a tradition. Jesus seems to be one having had his birth date moved more than once for several different reasons. The real date that Jesus was born seems to have been lost in time or perhaps never existed at all!
Perhaps the date of birth of Jesus is 17th of January - who knows?

Interesting point James

It was Old Style verses New Style
and that had to do with England changing the calendar
Old Style was Jan 6 and New Style was Jan 17
I guess Ben could have celebrated two birthdays


The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (c.23) (also known as Chesterfield's Act after Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield) is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. It reformed the calendar of England and British Dominions so that a new year began on 1 January rather than 25 March (Lady Day) and would run according to the Gregorian calendar, as used in most of western Europe.

The Parliament held that the Julian calendar then in use, as well as the start of the year being 25 March was
“ attended with divers inconveniences, not only as it differs from the usage of neighbouring nations, but also from the legal method of computation in Scotland, and from the common usage throughout the whole kingdom, and thereby frequent mistakes are occasioned in the dates of deeds and other writings, and disputes arise therefrom.[1]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Style_ ... tyle_dates

Hi Lovuian,
All good stuff. Never knew about those date changes for the start of the new year.

Neither did I James that is why I love the mystery
I learn something everyday

Since we have a map of the Gulf Stream and we know the sailors knew about it
except England refused to admit it....the location of Franklins map was found just recently in Paris libraries

The ships used the Gulf Stream so it is not hard to believe the Vikings or Basque fishermen or Templars could have used it to come to America
America's east coast and Florida is part of the conveyor belt

I saw a researcher from NOAA is researching the eddies that help push the conveyor belt along

Hi lovuian,
I believe there is actual evidence for the Vikings having visited and perhaps occupied North America for a period of time. An interesting point also is the exodus of some French nobility to Canada during the 17th Century which seems to have occurred between 1660 and 1670 for the most part.
It wasn't just the nobility that uprooted either, there were several families from the Languedoc as well as families from Brittany who used to live in the Languedoc during an earlier phase. Such families were lucky to escape the French revolution which followed some hundred years or so later.
The trade routes from France and Canada between 1660 to about 1770 must have been pretty busy and you can bet your socks off that the Gulf stream was used during that period. Also the trade routes from Spain to the Caribbean will also have had knowledge of this. It was the grand age a piracy on the high seas too and all the pirates that operated in those waters will have had more knowledge than anyone about the quickest way to navigate the north Atlantic.

Yep and some of these families lived around Rennes even the names Saulnier are found in Acadia (New France)
They brought their traditions legends knowledge and possesions with them
It is why I feel America can give insight on the mystery of Rennes and why explore this aspect

This gentleman


Commander Lord Anson
his role overseeing the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War
Britain turned into a Superpower even the combined navies of the French and Spain halt its power

It is why in George Washington's defeat of the English ....was such an amazing feat

as you can tell I love writing about such stories

Hi Lov,
I don't believe the Vikings would have used the Gulf Stream. Their maps and Sagas indicate a more northern route that hopped from one land mass to the next, ie. The Faroe Islands to Iceland to Greenland then to North America. One reason for this route was the amount of fresh water they could carry and another was a somewhat limited navigation capability (they could not determine longitude for one thing). A more complex map does indicate eddies circling counter clockwise off of the Gulf Stream to the north that may have been of some help.
Templars following Viking routes would have had nearly the same problems although certainly a better knowledge of latitudes.

I do understand the Vikings staying close to land
I just know that the gulf stream was noticed by the sailors





I saw Graham Hancock's lecture on You tube thanks to Roscoe
what he talked about is maps and how the Artic and Antartica

First to cross the Antarctic Circle. (January 17, 1773). Captain James Cook on his second voyage in the Resolution and Discovery. Crossed a total of three times during that voyage. In doing so, Cook was the first to circumnavigate Antarctica.

First to sight Antarctic continent. (January 27, 1820). Captain Thaddeus Bellingshausen in the Vostok and Mirnyy. Reached 69° 21'S, 2° 14'W saw an "icefield covered with small hillocks."

First known landing on Antarctic continent. (February 7, 1821). Capt. John Davis in the Cecilia lands at Hughes Bay, Antarctic Peninsula.

but Hancock talks of maps having Antartica on it in the

but here is an example what Hancock is talking about
Johannes Schöner globe





The Johannes Schöner Globe (1515), a manuscript globe, was made in 1515
what you see Bill is the Artic Circle and Antartica Circle

which were not discovered yet
many theories have been made on why it is there

what's interesting is on that map Antarctica appears to have trees and grassland