Imagine a fleet of Chinese ships crossing the seas more than half a millennium ago, thousands of miles from the comparatively safe shores of the Asian continent. Imagine as well the isolation, the commitment, and courage to face what cannot be known or fathomed.
The main comparison I have is my service in the British navy submarine service. As early as March 1961, I served as navigator of the HMS Narwhal. I recall very well the remoteness and seclusion of cruising at three hundred feet below the surface under a thick Arctic ice cap. Our task was to track Soviet nuclear submarines and produce a report deciding whether patrolling under the ice was feasible for nuclear submarines. If it were, Soviet submarines could shorten the distance between themselves and the Americas—their missiles could hit Texas. Our (future) Polaris missiles could target eastern Russia.
I was navigator of the Narwhal. My next appointment was to be operations officer of the HMS Resolution, Britain’s first Polaris-missile-firing submarine and at that time, Britain’s sole independent nuclear deterrent. Narwhal’s patrol area was in the Kara Sea between Jan Mayen and West Spitsbergen. Here the ice was a uniform twelve feet thick, broken every hundred miles or so by polynyas—stretches of clear, unfrozen sea surrounded by ice. During the brief hours of daylight one of my assignments was to find a polynya, so we could attempt to surface, charge our batteries, take sun sights, and receive signals from Faslane Naval Base, our port, in Scotland.
One day, we were cruising in ultra-quiet mode, circling at three hundred feet and searching for the sounds of Soviet nuclear subs, with their distinctive five clover-bladed propellers, driven by two shafts. Suddenly there was a bang and the submarine filled with smoke. As we donned our breathing masks, we needed to surface as quickly as possible. As navigator it fell to me to find a polynya. It was by no means easy.
The Arctic ice cap is not stationary. Where we were operating, the ice rotated counterclockwise unless there was a period of low pressure, when it reversed direction. So, on balance, the polynya we visited two days before should have been carried northeast—that is, farther into the ice toward the North Pole. So I advised the captain that was the course we should steer, accordingly.
We had upward-sounding sonar of ten kilocycles per second. This continuously tracked the thickness of the ice and it showed when this thickness was changing as one approached a polynya. So we watched the upward sonar like hawks. After less than two hours’ transit sailing northeast, we suddenly saw the ice change. Shortly afterward the water started to lighten, then suddenly there was clear water 130 feet above us. I immediately called the captain, who came to the control room and took over for me. We were able to surface; we started both generators, charged the submarine batteries, and cleared out the smoke from the submarine.
Now we were safe and earned our entitled “tots” of rum and it seemed appropriate to relax. I had brought a coconut mat and bats, balls, and pads for a cricket match upon the ice. So it was that we placed guards around the pitch to keep polar bears away. I captained the wardroom team and leading stoker Roberts led the ship’s company team. The wardroom team duly won.
The Arctic is a bleak, awesomely beautiful, but unforgiving place. The experience of being a navigator there gave me an innate kinship with navigators of all ages. Imagine finally, then, an attempt by an ancient mariner far from home to circumnavigate this Earth, to seek ports of call where one could replenish stocks of food and water, to survive shoals and storms and accidents with no grounding or support system whatsoever.
My time at sea left me with the knowledge of the imposing navigational challenges for any sailor, but it also gave me an appreciation for the triumph of those who sailed before me on their rough-hewn barks. I was easily hooked and enthralled by stories of early Chinese explorations. I began to look at these stories and, using my knowledge of the seas, was led by my research to a new way of understanding the discovery of America.