East-Southeast, a Secondary Point of the Compass Rose

East-southeast is a bearing of 112.5 degrees, midway between east and southeast. Among the more interesting things that can be said about the secondary points is how the horizon was divided before compasses. Polynesian navigators used a star compass, dividing the horizon by the rising and setting points of named stars, a system with far more than thirty-two divisions and one that requires no instrument; the rising points of the same stars are fixed for a given latitude, so a navigator who has memorised them can hold a course through the night.

Arab navigators of the Indian Ocean used a comparable system of thirty-two star risings and settings, the khanat, recorded in the fifteenth-century sailing directions of Ahmad ibn Majid. Both are divisions of the horizon quite independent of the European compass rose, and both are more sophisticated than the point system that replaced them.