How do pirates navigate their ships?

Question

With the staaaaaarrrrrs.

Answer 1

OK, here I am being geeky: since your question is in the present tense, modern day pirates navigate by GPS.

Now, navigation by the stars requires a knowledge of time, relative to some starting point. Once a reliable way was invented to keep good time it became possible to navigate with a fair amount of precision using the stars by day and the sun by night.

The navigator knew, for example, that a certain star, at midnight at his port, on a certain date, should be at a certain position. When he looked at it from the sea at the equivalent of midnight at his port, and found it to be at another position, he could determine how many degrees north or south as well as east or west he was away from the port.

Answer 2

Let's say that the secret treasure island (secret, because it is uncharted -- except by the pirates that discovered it) is located at latitude 15.7 degrees North and longitude175.1 degrees East. (They charted it when they were burying their treasure and marking the "X").

The pirates want to get back there. They are on the West coast of South America around the equator (0 degrees latitude). The navigator looks into his sextant at night and sights the North Star (Polaris), and determines they have to sail northwest to get to the island. So they sail almost straight North until they get to latitude 15.7 degrees (by looking through the sextant). Then they sail straight West until they run into the island. Then they dig up the treasure. Arrrrr.

It doesn't matter what the longitude is, as long as they are on the right latitude line East of the island, sailing West, they'll eventually bump into the island.

If they are modern-day pirates, they just use GPS navigation, and they can get to the island from any route that is the shortest from where they are, now.

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Answer 3

Pirates navigated by the stars and their compasses. (Just don't use Capt. Jack's compass, you'll get lost in a hurry) :)

Answer 4

They have a map (jumbo size) on their cabin wall a compass both mathmatical and geographal they don't tend to use stars

Answer 5

they have a compuse and they gage their position by the stars at night. the compuse gives them the reading of latitude and longitude so they know where they are in referance to the earth.