Sailors used to stay within sight of the coast — simply to avoid getting lost.
Before accurate navigation tools, determining your exact position at sea was a major challenge. While latitude (your north-south position) could be estimated by measuring the angle between the sun and the horizon, longitude (your east-west position) was much trickier.
It wasn’t until the 18th century, when the British Parliament offered a £20,000 reward for a solution, that progress was made. The invention of the first reliable marine chronometer finally allowed sailors to calculate longitude with precision — and explore the seas with confidence.
