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Not all rivers are created equal. Some have their flow reversed. Some are man-made. Linking the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, the 363-mile-long Erie Canal transformed north American trade in the 19th century via a complex system of locks. Undaunted by challenges – elevation, rapids, the Appalachian Mountains – engineers utilized doors controlled by…

All moving bodies (nautical vessels included) are understood to be governed – ever since Sir Isaac Newton introduced his theoretical framework – by the interplay of inertia, force, and action-reaction laws. Since this interaction is made immensely more complex by being immersed in water (which is itself in a constant state of flow), countering and…

Little more is known about the Phoenicians than their frequent voyages across the Mediterranean in the first millennium B.C., their superior craftmanship, and their alphabetic writing system. Most of our knowledge of this confederation of traders originate not from them, but rather from ancient Greek authors such as Homer, or Herodotus. Off the coast of…

Nous promettons selon nos espérances, et nous tenons selon nos craintes – we promise according to our hopes, and we deliver according to our fears – recites an adage by Francis, Duke of la Rochefoucauld. A lighthouse is a promise kept: it exists in the space between fear and hope – pledging safety and providing…

Marcus Annius Verus – better known as emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus – wrote most of his Meditations (the cornerstone compendium of Stoicism) as he fought German tribes along the Danube for about a decade roughly between 170 and 180 AD. One can speculate that it was perhaps the ever-changing flow of the river that…

Some words – as humans – contain multitudes. A bridge, for instance, is a commonly used homonym (i.e., a word with identical spelling and pronunciation, but with multiple unrelated meanings when used in different contexts). In the realm of navigation, the word evokes command, or connection. In some cases, it also conjures up the idea…

Determining direction while moving on water on a globe that rotates (on its axis), revolves (around another celestial body) and acts like a magnet is no small feat. This undertaking becomes far more ambitious when one aims to reach the northernmost point of such planet – both a fixed geographic location surrounded most of the…

Once upon a time, there was a veteran fisherman who had no luck out at sea for many, many, many days. Santiago then hooked a massive marlin, which – after a lengthy struggle – he managed to catch and lash to his boat. When sharks started to eat the fish, “you should have brought many…

“At last, on Wednesday [November 22], at noon, having the wind astern, we succeeded in doubling the Cape, and then ran along the coast.”  The Cape is the southwesternmost point of the African continent. The year is 1497. Whether authored personally by Vasco da Gama, or (perhaps more likely) anonymously by one of his fellow…

Without motive power. At the mercy of currents. The word adrift generally comes to mind when thinking about directionless displacement, or deviation – either from a (vessel’s) charted course, or from a (person’s) planned path. Hardship tends to accompany such aimless floating: while the mind focuses on the perceived infinite duration of time, it races…