NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2023 Nov 22, 08:54 -0800
I think this compass points thing really depends on the traditions of the Service you’re in. Airmen, who had few traditions to conform to appear to have used degrees from square one. North Sea trawlermen must have had very long traditions. I have a book listing ‘Trawler Disasters 1946-75 From Aberdeen, Fleetwood, Hull and Grimsby’ by John Nicklin and Patricia O’Driscoll, which includes excerpts of the evidence from the subsequent inquiries. Many courses given to the helmsman by the skipper are to the nearest two points e.g. NNW or SSW. In a few of the later inquiries the skipper gave the course to be steered in degrees, but as late as 1962 the skipper of the ‘Stella Rigel’ built in 1949, gave to course to be steered as NE by N, and later as E by N 1/4N. See lines 1 and 5 of p120. DaveP
