In the bicentenary year of the birth of Matthew Flinders at Donington, near Boston in Lincolnshire, it is my privilege to present to Members of three notable British societies some details of the life and work of this great hydrographer.

His surveying and charting impact was made entirely in Australian waters and he is probably better remembered in that country today than he is in his homeland. It is my hope that my discourse, added to the many activities that have been arranged in Britain this year, will do something to rectify this situation. My talk will attempt to tell the brief story of Flinders' 40 years of life and work, beset in his later years by many misfortunes. I will also examine in some detail how Flinders conducted his surveys by taking a few isolated examples, and finally briefly review the results of his labours.

The use of radio as an aid to navigation is a matter for continual discussion within the Royal Institute of Navigation, and it is the subject of fresh papers in almost every issue of our Journal. Two notable presidential addresses by the second holder of the office, Sir Robert Watson-Watt, in the early 1950s surveyed separately the air and the shipping industries and, as was proper from one so directly associated with the origins of radar, made close reference to this form of navigation aid.

The Chief Marine Superintendent of BP Tanker Co. and his Electronics Superintendent examine cost–benefit analyses of expenditure on improved navigational aids as part of a broader study which includes a technical appreciation of individual items of hardware and their contribution to the navigational package. It is suggested that the range of modern, and in many cases complex, aids now available needs careful scrutiny before the optimum outfit for a given vessel may be selected. This paper was read at a meeting of the Institute in London on 19 December 1973 with the President in the Chair.

With the growth of public air transport, safety in the air is a matter of concern not just to those who design, manufacture and operate aircraft, but to the public at large. After an accident has occurred and an unfortunate chain of events leading to the accident is exposed, it may be easy to say ‘this accident should not have occurred’ or ‘would not have occurred if…’. Publication of annual totals brings forth informed and uninformed comment on the apparent decrease or increase in the accident rate relative to some criteria such as the number of passenger kilometres flown. The objective of this paper is to present a scientific account of the evidence on the relationship between navigation and air accidents and the implications of this evidence for those who are professionally concerned with air navigation. As will become evident, how-ever, there are factors operating which go much deeper than the technical aspects and appear to have their roots in human behaviour, not just of the individual but of organizations and society as a whole.

The four papers which follow were presented at the Conference organized jointly by the European and American Institutes of Navigation in Hanover from 2–5 October 1973. A summary of all the papers was given in the last number of the Journal.

This paper, by the Deputy Managing Director and the Director of Operations of KLM Noordzee Helikopters BV., describes the operation of a 24-hour service now available for supplying pilots to ships entering the harbour of Rotterdam and for maintaining communications with North Sea oil rigs, with special reference to the unusual navigational problems involved. The paper, which was illustrated by a colour film, was presented at a meeting of the Institute held in London on 17 April 1974 with Captain V. A. M. Hunt, c.b.e. in the Chair.

During the last decade virtually every merchant vessel of any consequence has been equipped with v.h.f. radio-telephony equipment. It had been hoped by many that the emergence of this remarkable and widely available communication facility would have been recognized in the recently (1972) agreed International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, as a means of helping to ensure that no cancelling actions would be taken by two vessels trying to avoid each other. However, for a variety of reasons, this opportunity was not grasped by the Imco working party on the Collision Regulations and consequently was lost at the International Conference held in October 1972.

The object of any kind of marine radar plot when ships are in fog is to synthetize as much data on the current traffic situation as affects or will affect the safety of own ship and so to produce a plan picture of the area around the ship and the vessels moving on it, more or less as it would appear to the eye in clear weather. The plot will be expected to show, not only the current position of each ‘target’ vessel, but also the expected forward movement of each and the risk of collision which this involves.

The word synthetize is used because it so completely implies the building up of separate elements of information into a whole; in this case, a continually changing whole. The word whole is also worth emphasizing, because only if the situation is so presented can the mariner appreciate the form which its development is taking both between own ship and those target ships which present a direct threat and between target vessels whose mutual evasive manœuvres may indirectly endanger own ship. The needed synthesis cannot be attained unless the predicted future positions of target ships are coordinated in time, so that the relative positions at the future time may be compared with the current relative positions.

This paper, by the head and the deputy head of the Civil Marine Navigational Aids Division of the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment, deals with certain problems relating to the proposed Channel Navigation Information Service, including radar coverage, the transmission of information, computer assistance and information display. The paper was read at a meeting of the Institute held in London on 30 January 1974 with the President in the Chair.

Much of the background to marine traffic problems in the Dover Strait has already been discussed in previous issues of this Journal. It was decided in 1971 that some radar surveillance of the area would be appropriate. The first steps were taken when a radar trial was conducted by A.S.W.E. in the St. Margaret's Bay area near Dover in 1971. As a result of these trials the Coastguard station at St. Margaret's was fitted with a standard marine radar as an interim solution.

Three aspects of the controllability of a ship may be distinguished:

(i) The intrinsic manœuvrability of the ship. Requirements can be stated in terms of the manœuvres the ship can perform by means of its own control devices.

(ii) The environmental boundaries. It can be ascertained whether the manœuvres as determined in item (i) compare with the area (for instance in a harbour) available for the manœuvre. Requirements can also relate to the manœuvrability of the ship in reaction to environmental disturbances and their compensation by means of the ship's control devices.

(iii) The human ability to perform the manœuvres of which the ship is technically capable in the area available.

The use of shipborne computer-controlled navigation systems has increased considerably during recent years. The expected advantages depend on the type of vessel; in cargo ships the safety aspect is predominant, whereas in research vessels the accuracy and reliability of position fixing are of primary importance.

Generally, computer-controlled navigation systems include a collision avoidance facility operating in conjunction with the radar. This basic equipment is usually extended by a position fixing system, calculating the latitude and longitude from the signals of position fixing transmitters and achieving optimum accuracy by sophisticated weighing techniques (Integrated Navigation). A further step in automation is the automatic guidance of the ship on preselected tracks.

Liverpool has long been a major seaport and the present centre of nautical education at the Department of Maritime Studies of Liverpool Polytechnic has developed from the Liverpool Nautical College over several decades. Most of the students have a background of experience in merchant shipping and the port industry. The courses include those for certificates of competency, the examinations being conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry. The other main courses are the B.Sc. (Honours) course in Nautical Studies, H.N.D. in Nautical Science and post-experience and special courses in radar and recent developments in ship operations. Higher degrees (M.Phil and Ph.D.) are obtainable by research and an M.Sc. course is in preparation. When qualified, the students and graduates have gone to a wide range of posts at sea and ashore in the maritime industry, the majority being actively engaged in ship operations.

It is likely that in the future aircraft designs will be increasingly tailored to optimize the traffic system rather than the economics of the aircraft considered in isolation. In this paper Mr. Attwooll, of the Mathematics Department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, discusses the effect on the properties of air traffic systems of the individual characteristics of aircraft. This paper (published by permission of the Ministry of Defence), which reflects Mr. Attwooll's personal views rather than any official policy, was read at a meeting of the Institute in London on 28 November 1973 with the President in the Chair.

A practical traffic control system can be envisaged as a hierarchy of control loops, each serving to convert a traffic demand into a potential traffic flow. Each loop is concerned with problems that can be foreseen to arise at some time in the future and the distinctive characteristic of any loop is the distance ahead, in time, to which it prognosticates. Although this model is probably applicable to most traffic systems the present note will apply it in the context of air traffic control.

Figure 1 shows a whole family of possible control loops. (Not all of these are present in all A.T.C. systems.) In each loop there is a mechanism for the prediction of future traffic. This prediction is compared with certain internal criteria and, if these are not satisfied, some control action is taken to coerce the traffic pattern into some more acceptable form. It is characteristic of most of these loops that they cannot be proved to be capable of safely handling all conceivable traffic demands; there is an implicit assumption that the superior elements of the control system will not tolerate a traffic demand which is beyond the handling capability of the inferior loops, but that a residue of unsolved problems can generally be left to be handled further down the chain.

The technological history of navigation and that of time measurement have proceeded side-by-side for centuries and have interacted one upon the other. Improvements in navigation sensors have stimulated corresponding improvements in chronology and, more recently, improvements in the technology of time measurement and frequency control have in turn stimulated developments in navigation techniques.

Prior to the seventeenth century the available methods of time measurement were very crude but, in terms of accuracy, were consistent with the performance of the very imprecise sensors that were available for dead reckoning. The sand-glass provided a reasonable match, in terms of accuracy, to the Dutchman's log.

In considering ships’ bridges, present and future, we must first look at the history of the bridge itself. In the days of sail it was necessary for the helmsman and Master to stand on the poop in order that they could watch the trim of the sails, and for the helmsman to get sufficient purchase on the wheel he had to stand up. With the introduction of steam it was necessary to stand as near as possible to the machinery so that orders could be passed by voice pipe and initially the ‘bridge’ was placed between the two paddle boxes. From here the quartermaster steered the ship and the Master passed orders to the engine-room by voice pipe or mechanical telegraph.

Airborne computing has been with us since the very early days of aviation when it comprised such basic calculations as TAS from the observed parameters of IAS, temperature and altitude. The display requirement for this type of computing was virtually negligible. However it was appreciated that where instruments could take over the repetitive processes of navigation the aviator could devote his time to tasks which he could perform better than the machine, calculations which he could perform more speedily or more economically than the technology of the time made possible and those which required the intuitive reasoning which has always made navigation a combination of art and science. The Air Position Indicator is an example, and its logical extension the Ground Position Indicator. These analogue computers not only freed the navigator from a great deal of repetitive work but provided a consistent accuracy, and some limited tactical flexibility. The demand for display was still small and easily accommodated in the relatively uncluttered crew positions in early aircraft. As aircraft systems became more complex and speeds increased, the increased workload meant that the crew were not capable of accepting all the information from the increasing number of sensor displays and calculating position, heading to fly, E.T.A., fuel state, and so on, with sufficient rapidity for the required accuracy to be maintained. With the aircraft coming into service it was also necessary to consider optimum altitude and minimum-fuel flight paths.

Ergonomics can mean the science of making work fit the worker or the study of man at work. This paper will be confined to the aspects of ergonomics affecting ship design, which include anatomy and physiology, anthropometry, and physiological and experimental psychology.

Radio-navigation systems in which position is determined as the intercept of two range-difference hyperbolae require a minimum of three transmitters to provide a pair of base lines, which are inclined to each other at an angle as close to 90° as practicable. Calculation of position in such systems, e.g. Decca, Loran &c., is generally a relatively complex process as the hyperbolae intersect at a random and widely varying angle.

The Vinland Map, published with considerable publicity as ‘the most exciting cartographic discovery of the century’ by Yale University Press in 1965, has now, on the evidence of spectographic analysis by Walter McCrone Associates of Chicago, been virtually proved to be a modern forgery. The details, which have appeared widely in the press and were the subject of a meeting at the Royal Geographical Society on 4 February 1974, need not concern us here. The interest in Professor Taylor's paper written in 1963 well before the map's publication, is that working from measurements on a facsimile reproduction and with her own unrivalled knowledge of early cartography she was able to establish, at any rate to her own satisfaction, that the Old Map, as she calls it throughout, was a fake. She was the first scholar to cast serious doubt on the map's authenticity, and needless to say her views were hotly contested.