NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: 1851 Bowditch
From: Bruce Stark
Date: 2003 Feb 1, 15:52 EST
From: Bruce Stark
Date: 2003 Feb 1, 15:52 EST
Fred, One thing we've often been told the old navigators couldn't do was get latitude if they missed the noon observation. They had a number of ways of doing that. Any two altitudes of the sun we could use for a fix would give them their latitude. Local time too, if they wanted it. And, do you remember what we went through on the list last year in order to convince people they didn't need accurate Greenwich time to calculate accurate altitudes? It started last winter as I recall, and the problem kept coming up. The main thing to keep in mind when you read that 1851 Bowditch is that you are in a different world. Celestial navigation as we know it would have been useless. It requires that you know Greenwich time before you can work your observations successfully. Our celestial navigation, and the nautical astronomy Bowditch knew, are two different animals. Key words and phases had different meanings then. Don't jump to conclusions when you read that 1851 "Navigator." Follow through, work the "problems," and see what Bowditch DOES. Bruce