All-seeing eye

摘要

In the days before radio - a little more than a century ago for marine purposes - once a ship had departed a port, the only news of its position before its arrival at its destination would come from other ships that had passed it during the voyage. In those days, most shipowners and cargo interests would have given their eye teeth to have had access to regular updates on the ship's position. There was a primitive tracking system of sorts provided by commercial agents and shipping journals that reported arrivals and sailings of ships, but these were only available to subscribers and could be several days or weeks out of date by the time information had been reported and published.