Who were the best navigators?

Question

Portugal, Spain, England, French, Holland or other?

Answer 1

It's hard to say because every country had his own golden age of navigation. Spainiards were the greatest explorers that discovered the American continent and made the first travel around the world.The portugeses traveled to america too and they sailed the border of africa and reached the india. England probably was the greater naval power after their victory over the spanish empire, they keep this maritime domain against spain, france, holland and germany throught the XVI, XVII. XVIII, XIX and XX centuries. Holland was a great naval power in terms of the commerce but they never were as spain and portugal were in the exploration or britain in the military navy. France had a good naval fleet but they were mostly a continental power. Japan was one of the greates naval powers in the XX century, germany too (with submarines) and the russian navy. We should remember other maritime powers as the vikings, athens, rome, carthage, phoenicia, the arabs, the turks, genoa and venetto.

Answer 2

England

Answer 3

I am coming in with an unusual answer here but the moaris of
New Zealand were in a league of their own when it came to navigation with the primitive craft they had.Have a look at
the pacific islands and see how far they reached.
They had a novel method of navigation.The geography of the ocean floor creates patterns on the surface of the ocean
By day they read the patterns of the water surface on cloudy days and on days when there was little or no cloud they
combined this knowledge with the position of the sun.
By night of course the stars and moon.Who were the greatest navigators will never be unknown but they are certainly in the race.

Answer 4

Arabs the first to use navigating device to discover America, to read the stars and other great things.

The voyage of Vasco Da Gamma wouldn't have been posible without the help of Ibn Majid.

For political reasons and oppression by the west a lot of discoveries and contributions both from the Islamic world and Africa have gone unrecorded and appear that only the west has done things when in fact it is not so.

Answer 5

I would like to second Robert M, and add the following.

The Carthaginians were an offshoot of the Phoenicians, based in roughly what is modern day Lebanon. As the Phoenicians they were indeed the most formidable navigators of their time, they actually performed a circumnavigation of the entire African continent at the behest of the Egyptians 2,000 years before the great explorations of the European nations of the 14th and 15th centuries.

It has long been believed that many charts ( sea maps ) had remained in circulation for hundreds and even thousands of years, dating from the Phoenicians and before. These charts aided manya voyage of 'discovery', most of which were really voyages of re-discovery.

The Phoenicians are widely believed to have crossed the Atlantic to both North and South America frequently, which, as any sailor will tell you, is not nearly as difficult as it maay seem to a 'land-lubber'. There are sunken galleys of distinctly Phoenician design off the coast of Brazil, and tin smelting sites in what is now the USA.

What it is even more interesting is that the Phoenicians themselves descended from an even more ancient race of long distance navigators, about whom we know almost nothing, other than that they were referred to only, and rather cryptically, as 'The Sea People'.

As the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians almost certainly arrived in Egypt by sea, and at around the same time as the 'Sea People' started cropping up in Middle Eastern history, I am rather inclined to think that the two were linked, maybe the 'Sea People' were the naval arm of Thoth and Osiris, the co-founders of Egypt. Who came to Egypt from opposite directions, Thoth out of the west, and Osiris out of the east, but both having the same origin............or maybe not ?

Answer 6

Ever? I would nominate the ancient Carthaginians. In a far more primitive era, they sent their merchant ships from the Mediterranean out into the Atlantic, up to England, as a regular trade route --they were there for tin, primarily, I believe-- and the legendary voyage of Hanno the Navigator perhaps as far as what is now South Africa, on the Atlantic Coast.

Answer 7

Rome is undoubtedly one the absolute most lovely towns in the world; every year an incredible number of tourists originate from around the globe to admire the treasures and projects of Roman artwork and structure and to be one of them you should begin with Hotelbye . One of the very famous of Rome's several squares is Piazza Navona. This place keeps the form of the Stadium of Domitian that when stood here. Piazza Navona was builted by Emperor Domitian in 86 AD and has three spectacular fountains.

Answer 8

Probably the Vikings.
They navigated using a Lodestone. A kind of primative magnetic compass. It is also now being argued by some academics that they discovered the Americas long before Christopher Colombus.
They also sailed the open sea in open ships...that took guts!

Answer 9

Fransisco De Gama, Amerigo Vesprucci, Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook,

Answer 10

Those that found what they were looking for (so scrap Columbus) and those that could find their way back home (so scrap Captain Cook).

My personal favorites are the Chinese imperial eunuch Zheng He, and Fernão de Magalhães (aka Ferdinand Magellan), who was Portuguese but worked for Spain. And the Vikings who sailed to Iceland, Greenland and America, and all those Irish fishermen that fished off Newfoundland before Columbus "discovered" America.