NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Polar Sticks in "The Barefoot Navigator"
From: Peter Mackenzie
Date: 2025 Feb 27, 03:18 -0800
From: Peter Mackenzie
Date: 2025 Feb 27, 03:18 -0800
In Jack Lagan's book, "Barefoot Navigator", he describes the Vikings moving west along a parallel of lattitude using a "polar stick". An image of this type of simple device is attached (taken from Lagan's book). Lagan's comment on the image is that it is "calibrated in degrees of latitude" when the stick is held at arms length.
Surely the lattitude values should be labelled the other way round in the image? ie: with larger angles (latitude) at the foot of the stick and smaller ones towards the top?
Peter
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