NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David C
Date: 2024 Jan 28, 18:06 -0800
This thread began with discussion about masters taking their chronometers off ship for them to be rated. There was also another thread about time balls. In 1881 11 masters presented a petition to the Otago Harbour Board.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ODT18810128.2.30
See the comments by Captains Logan and Thomson. My conclusions from this are:
(a) Time balls were not a convenient or reliable way of rating a chronometer. The time ball keeper offered a rating service for chronometers taken off ship.
(b) As a rule ship masters did not regulate their own chronometers. Chronometers were taken off ship to someone who offered a regulating service (eg Mr Bartlett).
This then raises a question - if shipmasters took the easy way out and took their chronometers off ship to be rated then why would they bother with lunars?
