Compass

"By the start of the 19th century, compasses such as this were commonly used in the Gulf. Before then, captains of pearl fishing and trading vessels relied primarily on their own knowledge of the seas, coasts and islands to navigate their way to pearl banks and coastal towns. Sometimes their knowledge was encoded in rhyme, and the deepsea navigators relied on the stars to reveal their location and direction of travel.

This example is a dry card compass housed in a metal bowl, which is suspended in a brass, copper metal alloy gimbal, attached to a wooden box with a sliding lid. The box may not be original to the compass. The compass was used to indicate the four cardinal directions (north, south, east and west), and provided the starting point was known, could be used to take bearings to indicate the direction of travel to reach another known point."