NavList:

   

Reply

Hi Peter -

What book was that? Sounds lke a good read.

Not too long ago I read Eric Newby's The Last Grain Race and seem to
remember  him mentioning the skipper using a sextant, but that's about
all. Of course Newby was 19 at the time and before the mast.

Hewitt

On 1/31/09, Peter Fogg  wrote:
>
>
> George Huxtable writes:
> > A repeated theme seems to be the rough-and-ready American mariner,
> rejecting
> > such gimmicks as lunars and chronometers.
> >
> > And that seems to have had a resonance in real life, to judge by an
> account
> > by Silvio A Bedini, chronicler of American technology. He quotes from
> > Samuel Eliot Morison,s  "The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1860"
> > (1921), who noted that even in the early nineteenth century, the position
> of
> > a ship was generally still determined by dead reckoning with the use of
> only
> > a compass, log line, and deep-sea lead. Among examples of Atlantic voyages
> > made by American vessels using these traditional methods, he reported that
> > an American vessel was seized at Christiansand, Norway, because she had
> > arrived in port without chart or sextant. The ship was freed only after
> > other American shipmasters in the port protested that they frequently
> sailed
> > the width of the Atlantic without those aids, claiming that any comptent
> > seaman could do so."
>
> Without the American emphasis this accords with my own readings, as:
> I have been recently reading the story of a then young man who just managed
> to take an apprenticeship under sail in the early part of the last century,
>
> when sail was already considered an anachronism. The conditions were often
> appalling, e.g. sailing across Bass Strait (between the Australian mainland
> and Tasmania) with the crew literally atop a deck cargo of explosives; the
>
> only prospect of a hot meal or drink meant lighting a fire on top of their
> load. Which they eventually did, during a long and cold winter crossing.
>
> On another occasion they loaded timber in New Zealand bound for Australia.
>
> The Tasman is often stormy but this was exceptional; for week after week
> they wallowed in terrible weather, hove to. The load shifted, the weather
> only got worse. Eventually they spoke another ship which carried news back
>
> to the ship's agent in Sydney who sent out a tug to look for them and bring
> them in. The author said these old masters did no navigation that he ever
> noticed, and seemed to instinctively know their way around the waters they
>
> knew well. Of course heading west from north of NZ it would be difficult to
> miss the Aussie mainland.
>
>  http://fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?y=200305&i=010198
>
> From another George post:
> A couple of years ago I was loaned a book on an American voyage to China,
> with the unlikely aim of establishing a trade in US-grown ginseng (talk
> about carrying coals to Newcastle...) The Chinese weren't impressed by its
>
> quality and the project failed. I can not now remember the name of the
> vessel or the book, or the exact date of the voyage, but I think it was in
> the 1830s or 1840s. She was a new, Boston-built, well-found square rigger.
>
> The point is that the book contained a rather full copy of the ship's log,
> and it was clear from reading that log that the voyage from New York to
> China, and back, was made entirely by latitude sailing, with no measurement
>
> of longitude anywhere. Longitude estimates came from dead-reckoning, and
> there were several cases of the ship deliberately sighting oceanic islands
> (such as the Cape Verdes) to obtain a longitude, but that's all. It was a
>
> real eye-opener to me, that navigation could be so backward, so late on.
> http://www.fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=010192&y=200305
>
> Nevertheless, I've no reason to doubt what Frank says, and shows, about
> American whalers.
>
>
>  >
>

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc
To post, email NavList@fer3.com
To , email NavList-@fer3.com
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

   

Reply