NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Baffled by Baffin
From: tony
Date: 2005 Nov 24, 13:20 +0000
From: tony
Date: 2005 Nov 24, 13:20 +0000
Baffin says: Most part of this day I spent about finding of the meridian line; which I did upon an island neere the sea, hanging at the extreames of my meridian line two threads with plummets set them instead of an index and sight. Elsewhere in the journal he mentions his attempts to check compass variation and the use of a very large quadrant (4 feet in semi-diameter). I assume that on 8th July he used the quadrant and the noon sun to gauge the direction of the meridian, because he finds the compass variation in that place to be 23 degrees and 28minutes West. But I am m still baffled by his data from Searles ephemerides. From my calculations it puts him 60 degrees East of London. Perhaps he misread the tables but didn't spot the error because the final figure of 60 degrees etc was reasonably close to where he thought he was.