Chart a course around that plot hole - useful tools for tales of the sea. · 6:07pm Jan 10th, 2019
Greetings folks,
Thought I would share another of the 'tools' I use to accurately set up my stories, this time I'm talking about charting tools. Googles maps and satellite views are good for setting up your story ashore, but it gives very little detail when you distance yourself from the shore.
God knows it can be expensive to buy vetted British Admiralty charts and approved electronic charts (seriously, don't buy BA charts unless you have to, they're like 30 pounds per chart). What do I use to chart a course in my story then? They are a couple nice websites for that.
- i-Boating will show you actual charts, complete with buoyage, soundings, and Traffic Separation Schemes. This site even lets you take measurings of distance and lines of bearing.
- OpenSeaMap is a versatile map viewing tool, I find that one most useful when it comes to appraising maritime traffic in an area, but it doesn't work too well if you want to view offshore installations and actual charts.
- Offshore blue, finally, will give you pilot charts for planning Ocean Passages. They are all the more useful in a story since they allow you to foresee weather conditions at a given time of the year, though it can be a bit difficult to read to the untrained eye.
Remember to always use the largest scale possible on a chart, critical details such as sandbanks and rock outcroppings are very often NOT shown on small scale overview charts.
Is it really necessary to use those things to create a story? Of course not, but I'd rather overindulge in worldbuilding and accuracy than create holes in my story. PARTICULARLY when it comes to navigation. I mean, come on, I use mariner as a name on this platform. I may not make the most compelling story, but at least I will be damn sure it's accurate.
Have a nice day.
Sounds like a good idea to me. I was an engineer when I was asea, and we were not encouraged to learn much about navigation unless it was our jobs. besides, back then, it was all on paper...
Having a sub find an underwater mountain doing 15 knots is not fun. The CO of that ship was my XO on my first ship. Care to guess what happened to him?
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Paper charts are still in use, though now they've been relegated to backing up the electronic display. I've got my own paper folio to train and keep sharp when I'm ashore (though they are in dire need of an update, curse my laziness to look up the notices to mariners).
As for your mountain, dunno really. I imagine the OOW having a panick attack and pulling the engine telegraph so far backwards the propeller starts to cavitate, maybe someone getting a knuckle sandwich in the confusion, and once the biblical amounts of paperwork are settled, one poor soul of a distracted navigator wound up in a supply depot for the rest of his contract's duration.
The CO? Probably had to shave off a bit of the gold on his shoulders.
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Sounds about right.
Also the navigator would either find themselves being retrained in a new profession or having a hard time renewing their enlistment. Maybe both.
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All I remember for sure (this happened back in 85 or 86) was that the CO, Engineer (who was OOD), and the QM division all wound up someplace remote, and NOT on sub duty. They wound up decommissioning the 636 after the incident. Really did a number on the sub. We were in the process of decommissioning the 617, and had to hurriedly REcommission the ship, at a facility that was not equipped to handle FBM's. I was a supply clerk at the time at a repair shop, and the paperwork chain was hellish on us for MONTHS!!
PS: I found this... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nathanael_Greene_(SSBN-636)
If you're interested, also look up SSBN-617. This happened as I was getting discharged, so I caught SOME of the action, but not all. I went on terminal leave at the end of May.
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Guess that would explain why I most often see surfaced subs in the Irish Sea, though the first time I saw one surface off the starboard side gave me quite a scare (cue me flipping through Jane's fighting ships to identify the bugger).
But seriously, damage to the ballast tanks in both incidents? These guys were lucky the subs were able to resurface after the incident, could have easily got the ship lost with all hands.
As for the paperwork, you yanks seriously have a problem with that. I remember reading the report on USS Fitzgerald and John McCain admitting that excessive bureaucracy resulted in negligence of navigation related duties. I expect they will have to adress that paperwork problem at some point. Not that the rest of the world or the merchies do much better, eh, captain unions keep complaining about it too.