A chart is a map of a certain area. These are mostly electronic now and are no longer paper. Remember the scene in “the Hunt for Red October” when Jonesy was showing the Captain of the Dallas where her expected to pick up his phantom noise again? Well they had paper charts to do their navigation on. When I made my daily trip to the bridge with the fuel and water report I would stop off in the navigation room. There were rolled up charts stuffed in cabinets and one large one taped to a table. This was where our course was plotted. It was also tracked on a computer.

Today however with technology charts are all stored in an electronic data base and the progress of a ship is kept the same way.

The term chart comes from the following sources. The Latin word charta, or the Greek charte, this was a kind of papyrus. In Middle English, the chart or maps were known as 'sea cards'.