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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Longitude, the Bounty, and William Bligh
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2018 Dec 2, 01:29 -0800
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2018 Dec 2, 01:29 -0800
Don Seltzer wrote
"Bligh states that he had taken lunar observations ashore at Simon's Bay, giving a longitude of 18° 48' 34" E, and directly compared that to to the longitude by the chronometer of 18° 47' E. He also notes that the previous published longitude was only 18° 33' E."
I should also add that in those days, the Greenwich Meridian was not universally recognised as zero longitude. I think it would be true to say that in Bligh's day only the British Navy would have used it as such. Maps of Cape Town of that era clearly use the Azores as the Prime Meridian, which was a convention in Europe. So who's longitude was it that was previously published as 18° 33'?
Geoffrey Kolbe
