Navigation

Navigation has been defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the process or activity of navigating by planning and directing the route or course of a vessel such as a ship or aircraft. Plotting the course is achieved by the use of instruments or maps. Navigation also refers to the passage of shipping along its chosen course. In Great Britain, the term is sometimes nominally applied to a canal or other navigable inland waterway.

Methods of navigation include:

• Dead reckoning. The process of calculating the vessel's current position by reference to an already determined position (known as a "fix") and taking due account of speed, heading (i.e., direction/course), and time elapsed since leaving the fix.
• Celestial.
• Radio.
• Radar.
• Satellite.
• Sonar.

Sources

• Oxford English Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, 2004.