NavList:

Robin, 

Thank you for the information on the method used by Worsley for his lunar occultation, and noting that it is not the method that described in "Hints". 

I have to agree that "Hints to Travellers" is not to my taste in instructional books, but I think you are being rather hard on a text that was written in style prevalent in the 19th century and which appears to have served its purpose, which was to enable travellers (explorers) to do, "... survey work which will take the place of first approximations and rough sketches, and which, if not possessing the extreme accuracy of a complete trigonometric survey, shall at least have some scientific basis (and be better) than anything previously existing."

It was was for use on land - that other realm of navigation that has not so far been mentioned as a legitimate area where navigators ply their trade, other than sea and air. Ralph Bagnold used "Hints" as his source of navigational methods when exploring the Western Desert in the 1930s, and in WWII the Long Range Desert Group used the same methods to earn a reputation for being able to be able to find their way around a practically featureless desert the size of Western Europe.

A comment on how a navigator may be defined: A navigator is a person who never feels he (usually he) is lost. Though he might be temporarily confused about his actual position, he is always confident that he will find sufficient clues about him - and have the skills to interpret them - that he will eventually find his way to his destination. Being a navigator, then, is a state of mind, which may be a consequence of some formal instructional course, but is not by virtue of any instructional course.