The Oldest Mediterranean Pilot

Abstract

Language holds many pitfalls for the unwary. A housewife picks up her iron, and so does the golfer: a butcher uses the steel and so does the soldier: a government nationalizes iron and steel. No wonder the foreigner makes ludicrous mistakes. And we in our turn, coming across an Italian book entitled Il Compasso da Navigare might be pardoned for supposing its subject-matter to be the navigating compass. This is not so. It is a learned and comprehensive treatise under the title belonging to the oldest surviving Sailing Directions for the Mediterranean Sea, and as the author, Bacchisio R. Motzo, clearly proves, such Directions were called a Compasso, and by a natural transference the same name was given to the sailing chart which was drawn to accompany the Directions. What we call a mariner's compass, or simply a compass, the Italians term Compasso-bussola or more usually just bussola. When English sailors began to use written Directions or ‘Pilots’ they called them Rutters (from the French Routier), while an alternative Italian name for a Compasso was Portolano, which also meant the accompanying chart.

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