Charting progress

Flotsam and jetsam

Sam Llewellyn writes nautical thrillers and edits The Marine Quarterly. He is currently patching up a 30ft ketch

Useless thing, these days, the chart table. Once, the navigator crouched over it, tensely twiddling the wheel on his Breton plotter, dividers at hand, pencils rolling to the swells, drenched in the blood-red glow of the night vision lamp. ‘Where are we?’ calls the helmsman down the hatch.

‘Thirty miles north-west of Ushant,’ replies the