NavList:

Frank Reed asked-

| By the way, George, can you tell us a little more about what  you're
doing
| with those logbooks and your collaboration with Ian?

=======================

With pleasure.

My wife Joan has been for many years a serious reader of accounts of
voyages for exploration and travel, and knows much more about them
than I do. For many years now, she has been a member of the Hakluyt
Society, which is a sort of upmarket book club about historical
travels. It commissions two or three scholarly volumes each year, all
well larded over with footnotes, which are issued free to members.
Once Joan has read her fill, and if I have behaved myself
appropriately, then I am allowed to read them next.

One of the Hakluyt publications is an edition, in three volumes, of
the Arctic whaling journals of William Scoresby the younger, by Ian
Jackson. Ian is a Yorkshireman, with a dry sense of humour, who now
lives in the US. He is not a navigator, but a geographer. Those who
are travelling to Mystic will learn something about Scoresby from him.
I would like to be there too, but that will not be possible.

The Scoresby volumes, which cover his annual whaling voyages into the
Greenland Sea, between Greenland and Spitsbergen, are appearing at
well-spaced intervals. Volume 1, covering 1811 to 1813, appeared in
2003 (ISBN 0 904180 82 4). Volume 2 is completed and I understand is
to be published in 2007. Volume 3 is being edited at present. Hakluyt
Society volumes are available to non-members, through bookshops (or
libraries, of course).

William Scoresby the younger was a remarkable character. From the age
of 10 he had sailed with his father, also named William Scoresby, on
his annual Arctic whaling voyages. At the age of 21 he was in command
of his own whaling vessel. He had a scientific and enquiring mind, and
wrote several books, and many articles, about the oceanography and
natural history of Arctic waters, and also about questions of
magnetism, being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also
appallingly religious, eventually becoming a church minister, and
writing dozens of religious tracts.

Where do I come into this? Well, reading volume 1, I discovered what
appeared to be an error, in a section about lunar distances. So I got
in touch with Ian, whose immediate reaction was to suggest that I was
just the fellow to write an appendix, part of volume 2, about
Scoresby's Arctic navigation. If nothing else, it would stop me
complaining about any errors in that volume. That seemed fun, so I
agreed. And collaborating with Ian has indeed been fun.

The silly problem, that I have just asked for help about, arose in my
reading-through of the edited text for Scoresby's 1818 voyage, in
preparation for volume 3. But I should emphasise that vol.3 is really
all Ian's work, and I am just acting as a back-stop for
error-catching.

Scoresby's voyaging was in the era when lunars were giving way to
chronometer navigation. In volume I, longitudes were by an ordinary
pocket-watch, backed by occasional lunars. In volume 2, one voyage
seems to have been without a timekeeper of any sort; perhaps his watch
had failed. By the next year, he had acquired a chronometer, and
longitudes had greater certainty.

As you might guess, Arctic whaling, into the ice, had its moments of
high drama. There are two occasions, in particular, in vol 2, that are
absolutely heart-stopping, though the journal itself is rather
undramatic in the way it describes them. But I would be giving the
game away to say any more. You will have to hear what Ian has to say
at Mystic, or read the book when it appears.

George.

contact George Huxtable at george@huxtable.u-net.com
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.



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