NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2017 Jan 26, 15:13 -0500
Before April 24th.
The 46 is crisp and clear. The numbers in question match other characters of the same numerical value.
No correction applied
April 26th
“fast 29”
YES! This fact astounded George! There were two chronometers aboard the Caird.
Five rows on the right.
Sorry, the letters run off the edge of the page and are extremely faint. I cannot apply a correction here. Perhaps personal inspection of the actual document will clarify this point.
15.47.44 is clear however. Any error must be in the prior 4 rows.
April 28th
The 1 min 4 sec of time mentioned is what Worsley wrote
Worsley notes that the chronometer should have been ever slower on 7May (probably written on 8May)
This all revolves around the what Worsley believed Cape Belsham to be. Please carefully examine my recent thoughts about this.
April 29th
The discussion of 3.7.30
It cannot be 3.17.30, as there is one one character between the two middle dots
There DOES however, appear to be a squiggle before the 3. Does 73.7.30 make more sense?
Interpolation for departure
These characters are extra small compared to the rest of the page and quite faint.
The 2.6 could be a 1.6.
Of the 183.4, only the 3 is in question. It might possibly be a 2.
There is a smudge below the 183.4 It may read 36x.x “368.x” maybe???
Any correction here will require further analysis.
Longitude from AM observation
Again, very faint.
There is a muddle of figures here, very hard to see
Will require personal inspection
1st May (as he wrote it)
The tail of the Y in May is over the top of this equation.
There appears to be an extra bump on that tail, leading me to believe it’s the “.”
Correction applied to version 3.1, attached!
Well done Lars!
Tuesday 4th May
Apparent time
Part 1
27.23.8 could possibly read 22.23.8 HOWEVER, the first 2 is clear and does NOT look like the second 2; or even the 2 immediately following the dot
Robin confirms this correction. Applied version 3.1
Part 2
44⁰50’13” should read 44⁰50’15”. This point was ALSO raised by Robin Stuart.
Correction Applied in version 3.1
Friday 5th May
DR N50⁰E90m
There are two characters superimposed here
Written as 90, the characters are the same size
Written as 95, the 5 is heavier and larger, as if Worsley corrected himself
Correction applied in version 3.1
Sunday 7th May
To the right of “slow…”
Those characters are tiny
Agree with your analysis. Correction applied
Add 23 instead of 25 to 39⁰11. Correction applied
39⁰3’6 remains correct. Indisputably so.
Robin Stuart asked:
"Is it reasonable to expect that it would have been standard practice for Worsley to record a DR position every day at around 15:40 GMT?"
My answer is no, the DR position was intended to show the position at local apparent noon, not at a specific GMT. When 24 hours is mentioned, I think it was noted only to show that the given course and distance was the last "day's run", not the sum of several days.
Furthermore, Robin asked: "Would it be normal practice to record an EP advanced to 15:40 GMT in this way?"
My answer is no. The latitude obtained from the noon sight was "moved backwards" to be used in the calculation of the am time sight. The longitude obtained from the time sight was then "moved forward" to the time of noon. On some days the course and distance sailed (estimated) between the time of am sight and noon is shown. The underlined position below the DR position is usually the observed position.
A few years ago I had some email discussions with Brad and produced a document with some of my findings. I have now made an update of the document and maybe it can bring some light into the transcript of Worsley's navigational log. I believe that every number in the log could be explained, he probably didn't write down unnecessary information.
Lars 59N 18E
Attached File:
Some-remarks-on-the-Worsley-log-v.3.pdf
