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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Lunars in 1766
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2004 Oct 2, 04:24 -0500
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2004 Oct 2, 04:24 -0500
Dear George, Thank you for your interesting remarks. The differences you notice between my Russian book and your English one indicate that we are discussing translations of two different books: the extended log and the book published in 1771. Your book does not claim to be a translation of this 1771 book, does it? I doubt that the Russians translated a pirate edition. The translators and editors seem to be professional historians though they were not experts in navigation. They clearly claim that the translation was made from the first edition of 1771, they also say that during Bougainville's life the book was published several times, second edition in 1772 and several abridged editions. They also say that Bougenville made corrections and additions in the subsequent editions, and cite some of these additions in the commentraies. They reproduce Bougenville's original maps (but not a map of the vicinity of Magellan strait), and include a long list of experts who read and corrected the translation. The experts were in zoology, botany and ethnography, but not in navigation. But they included a table of French measures from which follows that 1 sazhen=6 feet=1.852 m, and 1 league=1/25 of a degree of meridian=4.445 km. (I did not notice this table yesterday). A list of islands discovered by Bougainville is added. The list was composed by the first Russian circumnavigator, Captn Krusenstern. A good map of the region near Magellan strait would be helpful indeed in understanding Bougainville's way and observations. All I have is a World atlas. Alex.