Navigation Error Quotes

I could not have told where those damned islands were within 2,000 miles.

As, however, the port in reality lies in thirty-two degrees thirty-four minutes, according to the observations that have been made, they went much beyond it, thus making the voyage much longer than was necessary.

Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale.

Why wasn't Christopher Columbus able to discover Spain?

A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.

I've known the anxiety of being completely lost, flying at night. It can be extreme. You're travelling at close to five hundred miles an hour, and every minute that goes by takes you further into being lost unless you get help from ground radar somewhere or somehow figure out the error.

The Titanic hit the iceberg not because they could not see it coming but because they could not change direction.

As a mountain walker, one of the most frustrating mistakes one can make in bad weather is taking the wrong route down.

I lived in an attached house. My father used to drive into the wrong driveway all the time. He'd say, Damn it, how do you tell one of these houses from another?

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.

It should not be believed that a march of three or four days in the wrong direction can be corrected by a countermarch. As a rule, this is to make two mistakes instead of one.

We had an electrical fault about 500 miles into the trip and lost more than half our fuel. We had a fire on the roof. And missed Los Angeles by 3,500 miles at the end of the trip and ending up in the arctic in a snowstorm.