NavList:

Philip, you wrote:
"Perhaps a NavList member who is conversant with Wikipedia editing could change the references on the Eight Bells page,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Bells from Sextant to Octant? "

Please, of the things that can be repaired in that article, that is the least of our worries. That Wikipedia article was surely edited at some point by a navigation know-it-all who got carried away with nitpicking. For example, the article claims that one navigator should not be reading his sextant while the other is still taking the sight. Nonsense! He also says that most sights besides noon sun are taken at dawn or twilight (distinction?) thus "proving" that the sight is a noon sight, but that was the late 20th century standard, not so in the late 19th century. 

To your specific suggestion, I've said this before, and I note that David Barrie in his very fine recent book "Sextant" agrees, that one should not be pedantic about the word sextant. In the contemporary era of the work, what we call octants today were often called quadrants. And in the 20th century, the word sextant shifted in meaning to cover practically any instrument capable of measuring celestial angles regardless of the angular range. For example, aviation bubble sextants rarely had a range over 90°. Also, the angular range of the sextant built into the hull of the Apollo spacecraft has a range quite a bit less than 90°. There's no harm done in referring to this instruments in "Eight Bells" as sextants, and since this word is considerably more familiar in the English language (though much more obscure today than even ten years ago), it's a better choice for the Wikipedia article. 

Frank Reed
ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA