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When Michael Campbell first traveled on trans-Atlantic merchant vessels in the 1980s, they still used tools similar to those on board Columbus’ ship to find the angle of sun, moon and stars and calculate the ship’s position when it was out to sea beyond the range of the radar used for coastal navigation.
At 56, Campbell doesn’t consider himself an ancient mariner, but the cadets he takes on training cruises are more comfortable with the computer screens on the ship’s bridge than the sextant, the spanner or the chart room maps.
“Every ship I was on prior to coming to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy used a combination of paper and electronics,” Campbell said. “We’d put our position down on paper charts and keep them up to date.”