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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Gavin Menzies and "1421"
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2005 Dec 27, 00:47 EST
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2005 Dec 27, 00:47 EST
George, you and I could waste years on a guy like Menzies and his daft book. But in the end, we would be dancing to his song. And it's worth remembering that most people are not stupid. That they read it does not mean that they believe it. In my opinion, Menzies is just a crackpot with an outlandish theory that somehow strikes a nerve. There are people like him in almost every field of study, there's Hoagland, van Flandern, and farther afield, Velikovsky for astronomy. History gets Menzies. There's a review of this book on salon.com that starts with the following tagline: "The Chinese discovered America. Or did they? A dubious new book offers an object lesson in amateurish research, slapdash editing and publishing greed." And ain't that the truth! The rest of the review is here: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2003/01/07/menzies/print.html And by the way, yes, I agree with all your points on the incompetence displayed in Menzies' comments on nautical astronomy. He's got a big fancy web site, too, where he (and members of his "team") make all sorts of other ludicrous claims on navigational topics, among other things. I was a little bit curious about HMS Rorqual since I grew up near a submarine base and have known a fair number of submariners. When Menzies spent those two short years in command of it (1968-1970), Rorqual was already old. It was a post-war diesel-electric patrol submarine, and apparently the only significant event for the sub was when it collided with a US ship in the Phillipines on a "Friday the 13th" in 1969 (the US vessel was tied to a pier at the time). On a more positive note, I had a wonderful conversation (over a game of pool) in Mystic recently with a Quartermaster from a 688-class nuclear submarine. He was quite fascinated by navigation and even knew about lunars. I asked him what he would like to have most if his electronics failed (and note that subs navigate by inertial systems, not GPS). He said right away, "a paper chart with a position plotted recently", which they do in fact maintain. After that, DR was adequate for navigation. They don't use celestial, but they do still look at the stars... He mentioned what an amazing feeling it was to be the only person topside after surfacing in the middle of the night in the middle of the North Atlantic --alone on the sail of a nuclear attack submarine with the Milky Way in all its glory stretching from horizon to horizon. -FER 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W. www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars