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George writes:
>
> Peter Fogg has mentioned "Martin Creamer", though the name he wants is
> actually Marvin. C. Creamer.

Thanks for that correction, and for going to the trouble to fill out a
little my somewhat sketchy account from memory of the Ocean Navigator
article read years ago.

> Creamer sailed without navigational instruments. No sextant, no clock,
> not even a compass. It's the absence of a compass that is so
> remarkable. How did he cope when the skies, and particularly the
> nights, were overcast?

The way sailors have always done, I should imagine. While the prevailing
wind and swell can and do change they are often consistent over some hours
or longer.
>
> Latitude sailing was no great achievement.

Wow. Talk about a sweeping statement. Particularly in this case.
>
> But how did Creamer get his latitudes, without a sextant? He estimated
> heights of the Sun, above the horizon; declination of a star, that was
> near the zenith. He would lie on his back, on deck, and try to
> estimate which star was vertically above. An unlikely procedure on a
> heeling yacht, I would think.

And we are always grateful for your thoughts, George. Have you tried it? Is
it possible that, like many things, it gets better with practice?
Incidentally, 60 odd foot double hulled sailing canoes (indeed multi-hulls
generally) don't heel much. Again from memory, Creamer used a steel
mono-hull.

> estimated latitude from the degree of twilight that was apparent at
> Summer midnight!

Yes, the whole story is quite extraordinary. While we may marvel at the
methods they collectively worked well enough. Mission was achieved.
>
> He makes rather extravagant claims for the precision of his latitude
> estimates, but these are belied in the account, in "Navigator", of his
> approach to Australia. "But when he turned North off his parallel of
> latitude", we're told, "in search of what he hoped would be Tasmania,
> he and his crew suddenly found themselves closing on the barren,
> hostile shore of the southwest Australian coast, almost 1,000 miles
> west of Tasmania. Creamer had apparently been in the East Australian
> Current". There may be journalistic error in that account, of course.

There certainly may. The East Australian Current, not too surprisingly, runs
along the east coast. The current to be found south of Australia runs
parallel to the coast. If he sailed north too early it would imply
over-estimating the effects of that current, rather than forgetting to take
it into account.

> We can forgive Creamer that 1,000 mile error in longitude, but what on
> Earth was he doing in that latitude, about 9 degrees or 500 miles
> north of his intended destination?.

Well, nobody claimed his methods were conducive to great precision. And it
was a first go, an experiment. If he had done it again and again he may have
got better at it. The Polynesians, remember, sailed around the Pacific over
millennia.
>
> So I am not over-impressed with Creamer's navigational achievements,
> and hope his example will never be followed.

You're a hard man to impress, George. We can only trust your wise counsel
will be heeded by any future foolhardy adventurers who presume to venture
from their armchairs.

> Peter Fogg, always ready to offer advice,

Look who's talking!

> "If a zenith body can be found and identified then the
> boat's position is known."
>
> No, it isn't. Not unless you know the time. How do you get that,
> without any instrument?

Refer to helpful comment above re lack of precision. To put that another
way, how would he not have at least a rough idea of the time? Lack of
precision is not necessarily the same as lack of accuracy. Folk without a
written language tend to have great memories and compensating skills we may
find difficult to comprehend. Without a clock they may get better, for
example, at estimating the passage of time. Remember that the apparent
movement of the stars across the night sky is itself akin to a giant clock,
or reference. The point I was trying to make, that I took as the moral of
Creamer's accomplishment, is that nav should be a holistic process. We
should be ready to embrace, or at least consider, all possible methods.

> Which negates much of what follows, from Peter.

Oh, well that's OK, then. If you say so.

   

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