NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: on finding Pitcairn Island
From: Arthur Pearson
Date: 2004 Sep 24, 19:05 -0400
From: Arthur Pearson
Date: 2004 Sep 24, 19:05 -0400
It has been a long time since I posted to the list but I continue to follow the many interesting threads. Maybe I'll have more time to participate again soon, work has been demanding. I promise that eventually I will catch up on updating www.LD-DEADLINK-com with links to the more recent lunar discussions and to the great new material and tools Frank has provided. I do want to put in a request for information about Pitcairn Island. On my mother's side of my family, we have long been told that the captain of the sealing vessel that found the mutineers on Pitcairn was Mayhew Folger, reportedly a "seventh great uncle" of my generation. This was passed on to me by a great aunt who was reasonably credible based on her interest in Pitcairn and family genealogy. Can anyone at least confirm that Mayhew Folger commanded the sealing vessel? I would be most interested to hear any other information about Folger, his ship and voyage (out of Nantucket according to family lore), and where I might be able to find source material about him. I don't dare hope that his log might be part of Frank's wonderful on-line archive, and I can't help but wonder if he practiced lunars. -----Original Message----- From: Navigation Mailing List [mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM] On Behalf Of Frank Reed Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 10:54 PM To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM Subject: Re: on finding Pitcairn Island George H wrote: "It must, I suspect, be the biggest error ever to have been made, and then corrected, by the hydrographer. I wonder what it was about "Maria Theresa"'s log which caused the reef to be entered on the chart nearly 1000 miles too far West." I don't know, but I'll see if I can find the logbook. It's probably at one of the three main whaling museums in New England. Some pure speculation: even in the 1840s, Yankee whalers often kept longitude by dead reckoning during certain parts of their voyages; for example, when they were sailing back and forth in whaling season in wide open ocean. Frank R [ ] Mystic, Connecticut [X] Chicago, Illinois