NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Modern celestial navigation: when and why?
From: David Barrie
Date: 2015 Mar 7, 02:31 -0800
From: David Barrie
Date: 2015 Mar 7, 02:31 -0800
And to complicate matters further, the charts of the day were often very inaccurate. To illustrate this, the Admiralty charts of the Scilly Islands were found to be in error by some 20 nm when triangulated from the mainland by the Ordnance Survey in 1797. At that time the position of Tahiti was actually far better known! It's worth recalling that accurate charts only became possible when the longitude problem was solved in the 1750s. Incidentally, the experts question whether the Shovell disaster was a decisive factor in prompting the Longitude Act.
David
David
