this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Where did you learn that? Is that a real thing people are taught?
3 miles is roughly how far you can see to the horizon (before the curvature of the earth blocks your line of sight)
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/distance-to-horizon
I don't want to check miles, but it's pretty on point with what I remember, which is the horizon being 5km away for a 180cm (~6ft) tall person. (3 miles is close enough to 5km)
Getting even a few meters of something under you would drastically change how far you see.
A few extra meters wouldn't be too drastic. From the top of Everest the horizon is about 300km away.
1.8 meters sees ~4.8km. Standing on top of a car, on someone else's shoulders, at say, 5 meters, would give you eight kilometers.
Granted, not too drastic yeah. But like, if you have a tree, and climb it, and it's, say, 15 meters. Now you can see ~14 kilometers.
I'd say going from ~5 to ~14 by climbing a tree (or a mast of a ship) is pretty significant, but not drastic, I'd agree to that, yeah.
I wonder how much it was an advantage at sea, really. Like the scout at the top of your mast would be able to see the enemy ship from very far, while the enemies would technically be able to see only the mast of the ship that the scout is on, making it much harder to spot. I'm sure someone's written about it in tedious length. An upvote to anyone who finds me such texts.
Well, there's a reason old ships had people high up as scouts. These days we just use radar and gps
I mean yes, that's obviously the purpose. I just wonder how effective it was, and would like to read about it.
did you just not read the last paragraph??