Captain's Hobby

Dutch Sea Captain Jan Drent, now 59, never imagined that learned astronomers would ever take serious note of his lifetime hobby. While studying navigation at the Kweek School voor de Zeevaart (a merchant marine academy), he heard about the zodiacal light, a faint, wedge-shaped glow that reaches into the sky near the plane of the earth's orbit. It is best seen in the tropics just after dusk or just before dawn. Astronomers now believe that it is sunlight reflected from small particles revolving around the sun like miniature planets, but in Drent's youth the experts disagreed about nearly all details. So when he put to sea in 1910, he resolved to do some observing on his own.

For nearly 40 years, Drent sailed the world's seas on the ships of the Nederland Line. At night he watched the faint glow in the sky and came to know it intimately. He made detailed notes and grew so interested that he took two years off to study physics and astronomy at the Sorbonne. Back at sea with his new knowledge and the title of Licencie es Sciences, he began an intensive study of the zodiacal light. He plotted its hazy outline against the wheeling stars and kept records of its position, which changes with the seasons.

World War II did little to interrupt the astronomer-captain's hobby; bombs and torpedoes, in fact, appeared to avoid his ships. In the harbor of Trincomalee, Ceylon, Japanese airplanes sank two neighboring ships; U-boats in the West Indies knocked off three ships sailing close at hand. But nothing happened to any of Captain Drent's commands, and nothing interfered with his astronomical studies. The wartime blackout was actually a help: it allowed the captain's eyes to adjust to darkness, the better to observe the zodiacal light.

In 1948 Captain Drent retired and went to live in West Los Angeles with his wife and three children. He enrolled last semester in a course in geophysics conducted by Professor Robert E. Holzer at the University of California. Rather bashfully he told Dr. Holzer about the hobby that he had followed for so many years at sea, and Holzer permitted him to give a seminar talk on the zodiacal light.

The captain's two-hour address, packed with profuse detail, impressed even the crustiest professionals in the room. Said Dr. Holzer, "This is probably the most complete and reliable set of visual data which has been obtained on the zodiacal light." Forty years of watching the sky from ships' bridges had at last paid off.

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