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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Lunars in literature
From: Hewitt Schlereth
Date: 2009 Jan 30, 20:11 -0400
From: Hewitt Schlereth
Date: 2009 Jan 30, 20:11 -0400
Hey, thank you, thank you, all three. Two years ago a friend loaned me his copy of the edition with the illustrations by Alexander Kent. It was my second read (over a span of 50 years) and I did not recall any of these references. Hewitt On 1/30/09, George Huxtablewrote: > > Hewitt Schlereth asked- > > | Has anyone searched Moby Dick for lunars, noon sight or sextant? If > | not, sounds like MD may be digitized and sitting somewhere searchable. > | How do I go about it? > | > | Hewitt > > > I don't recall Melville taking much interest in navigation, in Moby Dick, > perhaps for the reasons I put forward earlier, that a whaler is indifferent > to latitude and longitude. To be honest, I've never enjoyed reading Moby > Dick, on account of its flowery and allegorical language. I prefer direct > and simple writing. > > But Hew's proposed search might turn up something of interest. I'm pretty > sure it will have been digitised. This is how I would go about such a > search, though it may not be the most efficient way- > In the Google search box, type in Google Books. Having got there, click on > "advanced search". This takes you to a form in which you can enter "Moby > Dick" as the title, and "Melville" as the author. It will give various > options for your search, and choose "full view", which will reject any > versions that have not been fully digitised. Then click Search. > You will then see any fully-digitised options: there may possibly be more > than one edition or version to choose from. > You can then scan down the pages, or choose particular pages to read, but > instead, you will want to enter "lunar" or perhaps "lunar*" (which will > embrace both lunar and also lunars) and click "search". It should then list > any occurrences of that word in the column on the right. However, that > searching action is not 100% accurate, depending as it does on > word-recognition using OCR (optical character recognition). Bit it's > remarkably good. > > > George. > > contact George Huxtable, at george@hux.me.uk > or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222) > or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---