Arte rates reguntur: Nautical handbooks in antiquity?

Given the huge number of technical handbooks on multifarious subjects, ranging from astronomy and music to rhetoric, horticulture, and cooking, the absence of ancient nautical handbooks comes as a surprise. Such handbooks did exist in antiquity in some form, likely having been written in the period of the Hellenistic boom of technical texts, but disappearing at some later point, perhaps around the third or fourth century AD. This disappearance could be due to a number of reasons, suggesting that the tastes and needs of the audience(s) for nautical technai were changing. These nautical handbooks may have been superseded by more specialized works, such as treatises on astronomy and mathematics, geography and periploi, and naval tactics, which may have been regarded as being of greater use than an interdisciplinary book on sailing. From a purely aesthetic perspective, many readers will probably not feel inclined to bemoan the loss of all ancient handbooks on navigation, as they will have looked similar to the periploi, containing many imperatives, short main clauses in hypotaxis, and many numerals.