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George H, you wrote:
"Frank Reed claims to write with more authority, about Joshua Slocum, than
Slocum's own son does."

Now, George, you know I didn't make any such claim. But I bet you didn't 
realize that Victor barely knew his father in the last twenty years of his 
life, did you? It shines a very different light on the later chapters of 
Victor's book and maybe helps to explain why there are only five or ten pages 
covering ten years. It also explains why Victor mistakenly suggests that the 
circum-navigation was accomplished because his father used lunars. That was a 
huge error. It's an understandable error, since even today people mis-read 
"Sailing Alone..." that way. But it's the sort of mistake that highlights the 
estrangement between Victor and his father. 

And you wrote:
"As I said, I know of only one successful small-boat lunar
observation that a listmember has made in ocean conditions, compared with
the many land observations that have been reported here. Neither I nor (as
far as I know) Frank has ever even attempted it. Perhaps he will tell us
about the sea-experience that he relies on, to allow us to decide whether to
take such pronouncements seriously."

PRIMARY SOURCE EVIDENCE, GEORGE. Go to the logbooks. Go to the accounts 
written in the era. I've written about all of this on NavList before. For 
example, there's the logbook of the schooner "Weymouth" from 1823. There's 
also Crowninshield's yacht "Cleopatra's Barge" in 1817 which was visited by 
that famous lunarian expert Baron von Zach who was astounded to discover that 
the whole crew knew and worked lunars. Then there's the Baltimore clipper 
"Erin" in 1807 which was captured and navigated by Basil Hall. Or how about 
the "Hero" out of Stonington (right next door to Mystic) which was a little 
sloop just over forty feet length and forty tons which was famously captained 
by Nathaniel B. Palmer when he independently discovered Antarctica in 1820. 
It's not hard to find historical examples of small ocean-going vessels where 
lunars were used.

-FER



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