NavList:

Bob,

I think that Lewis & Clark have be badmouthed over the years for poor sextant skills but I think that it is not deserved.  Pres. Jefferson instructed them to record and bring back the cel-nav data to Washington and a math person would do the sight reductions.

Before going West the two explorers were given a quick cel-nav course by Robert Patterson and Andrew Ellicott.  Patterson had developed a method of Lunars where you do not need to measure the altitude of the moon and the star or sun.  His method #4 calculated the altitudes from an asumed lat & long.  He thought this was easier for land explorers because they would not have to set up the mecury artifical horizon when doing a luner.

When Lewis and Clark got back to Washington their data wa given to Ferdinand Hassler, a professor at West Point.  Hassler could not do the lunars thinking information was missing and declared that the two explorers messed up.  Hassler apperentarly did not know Patterson's methiod #4.

In recent years a man naned Robert Bergantino used the log books of L & C and used method #4 and calculated Lat and Long for the expidation.  He said the data was very close to the moderen values.

A Richard S. Preston of N. Illinois U. has written an excellent paper on the Lewis & Clark sextant data. The paper can be found on the internet.

John H.