The Compass Rose - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 92

Let's begin not with this compass but with compasses in general. I think it's fair
to say that everyone in this topic owned at least one compass. John Saris owned
several. We know this because, when he was trying to swing a trade deal with the
Spanish at Tidore, he and his staff decided it would be politic to offer gifts to the
Spanish pilot, Francisco Gomes. The master of the Clove contributed a half-hour
glass and a half-minute glass to clock a ship's speed, a hemisphere to show the
disposition of the lands and seas, and a 'dipsie' (deep-sea) line to sound depths.
Richard Cocks threw in a quadrant 'for to observe the sun' and measure its angle
todetermine latitude. Saris gavehimaquadrant aswell, buthealsogavehimasea
compass.TheEnglishshipwasclearlywellsuppliedwithsuchnavigationalequip-
ment.
Neither Francisco Gomes nor John Saris could have known that the mariner's
compass was a Chinese invention: Chinese sailors had been using them since
at least the tenth century. Nor could they have known that the compass reached
Europe through Persian pilots, who acquired this technology from Chinese in the
thirteenth century, if not earlier, and thereafter passed it on to Mediterranean mar-
iners. The one thing they might have heard is that the Chinese thought compasses
pointed south rather than north. 'Compass' in Chinese is zhinan , 'pointing south'.
Southandnorthbeingonthesameaxis,itmakesnodifferencewhichdirectionyou
choose to identify as orienting that axis. They certainly wouldn't have known that
Chinese first utilised the tendency of magnetised matter to align with the earth's
magnetic field by casting pieces of loadstone on divination boards to predict the
future. Nor would they have known that the practice of casting pieces on a board
anticipated the invention of chess, dominoes and, most surprisingly of all, playing
cards.ThiscomplicatedhistorywasfirstputtogetherbythegreatEnglishhistorian
ofChinese science, JosephNeedham, andpublished whenIwaseleven yearsold-
long before I went to work for him as a research assistant two summers after going
through Friendship Pass.
Acompasswasuseful,butacompassalonedidnotenableamarinertonavigate
unfamiliar waters. Local knowledge was essential, and for that you needed a pilot.
Saris understood this necessity at several moments on his voyage. It would have
been impossible to bring the Clove through the tricky entrance into the harbour at
Hirado the first time without local pilots. In this instance he obtained the guidance
of two masters of fishing vessels he picked up outside the harbour. It was an easy
day's work for the Japanese fishermen, who received the handsome payment of 30
ounces of silver and a day's food for their trouble. These services were not always