NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Cook's Incremental Reckoning
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Mar 21, 05:55 -0400
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Mar 21, 05:55 -0400
Hi, Frank -
On this point:
"There's no problem picking some random meridian as the starting longitude for a voyage unless you need to look up navigational data, from an almanac e.g., that references a specific meridian. Choosing the Lizard, or Ushant, or Montauk as your meridian of departure does not make navigation less accurate. It does, however, make it more difficult in the long-term to compile and compare navigational information from different vessels and different voyages."
Well, true, but maps and tables of latitude and longitude are sorta/kinda helpful, whether you have a chronometer or not. Even if I was dead-reckoning across the Atlantic, knowing that Cape Cod was at 71 degrees and I left Lizard Head at 5, that seems to be helpful, even if my dead reckoning was only good to 10%. I realize that the choice of a prime meridian is arbitrary, but it's a bit like sharing a common dictionary - if the definitions are transient, it's difficult to communicate.
