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George, regarding navigational practices, you wrote:
"And how common amongst whalers, bearing in mind that whaling voyages were 
only in part planned transits from A to B, and that navigational skills were 
likely to have been passed down, within isolated communites, from father to 
son in the school of hard-knocks, rather than in maritime colleges by 
examinations."

Traditional ocean-going American whaling lasted for centuries. Naturally, in 
the early periods up through the beginning of the 19th century, the voyages 
were shorter, the system was less regulated, and the navigation was certain 
to be much more varied. The American whaling fleet in the "Early Whaling" 
period was small and competed directly with the fleets of other nations 
including Britain.

The period of "Peak Whaling" is the one that most people are familiar with. 
This is the era when the Charles W. Morgan was built. It's the era when 
Melville shipped aboard a whaler, and it's the world that he described in 
"Moby Dick". This was the time when the American whaling fleet numbered over 
400 vessels, occasionally almost twice as many, overhelmingly greater than 
the whaling fleets of other nations. Whaling was a true industry. New England 
vessels sailed on voyages lasting on average three years, typically with 
three to six months between voyages. These whaleships (and barks and a few 
brigs) sailed the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans using the standard 
navigational methods of the day. They frequently visited ports and Pacific 
islands. They determined their vessels' positions by chronometer, lunars, 
dead reckoning, too, and they took every opportunity to get their positions 
by other means, speaking other ships, sighting small islands along the route, 
and so on. 

How did they learn these navigational methods? New England had numerous small 
navigation schools. Of course, navigation manuals like Moore and Bowditch 
(and later Norie) were widely available. There were also private instructors, 
especially in the early period, like Nathaniel Bowditch himself. On 
Nantucket, the original home of American whaling, William Folger taught 
himself all about lunars while he was bed-ridden in the early 1790s and went 
on to instruct dozens of whaling captains in the methods of lunar 
observations. It's been claimed that the first American whaling captain to 
determine longitude by lunars was one of Folger's former students around 
1799. But the beginning of the Peak Whaling period was the tail end of the 
period when navigators still needed lunars. There are frequent longitudes by 
lunar in the 1840s, but none that I have seen (on whaling vessels) after 
1850.

American whaling changed significantly around the time of the US Civil War. 
Petroleum was discovered in the US in 1859 significantly lowering the demand 
for whale oil (and pushing the whaling industry away from sperm whales and 
towards the baleen whales). The war itself took a severe toll as Confederate 
raiders chased and sank Yankee whaleships even in the distant waters of the 
Pacific. This was not as difficult as it sounds -- sail to the whaling 
grounds, and you will find the whaleships. Finally, the overland 
transportation system improved dramatically with the completion of 
trans-continental railroads. Most of the New England whaling fleet moved to 
San Francisco. That's where the C.W. Morgan lived for many years. 

From San Francisco, the whaling voyages were less arduous, usually lasting 
just one year with a month off between expeditions. Navigation in this period 
was mundane and straight-forward: latitude by Noon Sun, longitude by time 
sight, day after day. Lunars were no longer necessary. Whaling vessels still 
made frequent port and island visits when they sailed. There was also a 
unique species of coastal whaling known as "lagoon whaling". Whalers would 
sail from San Francisco and anchor in bays and lagoons on the coast of Baja 
in the breeding grounds of the gray whales. The small boats would sail for 
miles around the coast, but clearly there was no ocean navigation in any of 
this.

You also wrote:
"From a couple of decades into the 1800s, a well-found vessel navigating the
oceans might be expected to carry either some sort of chronometer, or else
someone aboard who knew how to take and work lunars. A vessel with neither
would be putting those on board, and the vessel itself, at avoidable risk.
But those were times when a much higher level of risk was tolerated than
today. Morison's account of an American vessel arriving in Norway "without
chart or sextant" takes risk levels considerably further."

Not necessarily. As I noted previously, when they refer to the lack of a 
sextant, they're referring specifically to a sextant, and therefore the 
ability to shoot lunars. It doesn't imply that they didn't have a quadrant on 
board. Also the lack of a chart is not significant. Charts were rare and 
expensive, and there's little evidence of them in any nineteenth century 
navigation documents (on American merchant vessels). As long as you have a 
good, long list of latitudes and longitudes of rocks, islands, and important 
coastal points, you're in business. Have a look at the "American Coast Pilot" 
from the early 19th century, for example. It's not a chart book. It's filled 
with detailed descriptions and sailing instructions that will get you into 
port safely without any charts.

-FER




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