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Four who actually know how to use the sextant. On coastal merchant ships
it went like this :-)

The Old man knew everything about the sextant, but didn't tell you.
The First Mate used to know, but was too busy running the ship
The Second Mate knew it for his exams, but forgot the details.
The Third Mate was going to know when after he wrote his exams.
The Navigation Cadet wanted to know, but could not find anyone to teach him.

Question: I spent a lot of time sailing the foggy waters around
Newfoundland, and we would often have a sunny day above, but the horizon
was obscured by fog. Does anyone on the list own one of those sextants
that drop a bit of shot to calculate the horizon? I believe the US Navy
had them.Were they any good?

 If the sextant had continued to evolve, I think a gyroscopic base might
have been a good route. I saw one somewhere.Does anyone know about those?

Did inertial navigation ever make it to the Merchant Navy bridge or is
it still military only?




frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.net wrote:
> And three days after I wrote about this on NavList, I see that one Tim
> Queeney blogged about it on oceannavigator.com:
> "The U.S. Navy is well known to be secretive about its nuclear submarines.
> [...] But as ON contributor Greg Rudzinski points out, there is one piece of
> gear that sub officer's will discuss: the fact that the boat carries a
> sextant. Check out this article on the new U.S.S. New Hampshire from the
> Nashua, New Hampshire Telegraph. One of the sub's officers actually admits
> there are only four members of the crew who know how to use this rare
> navigational device. "
>
> A hot topic. :-)
>
>
>
> frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.net writes:
>
>
>> Here's an article about a tour of the new Virginia class submarine "New
>> Hampshire" which is almost ready to joing the fleet (the URL below should be
>> all on one line; just in case your web browser or email client doesn't
>> render it that way):
>> http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081021/NEWS01/310219927/-1/news01
>>
>> Right at the top, the article notes that the submarine carries a sextant,
>> just in case. Later in the article, it's explained that they carry no paper
>> charts.
>>
>>  -FER
>>
>
>
>
> >
>
>


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