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It's a pleasure to join Frank in welcoming Jan Kalivoda back to the list after 
such a long absence. He has been missed.

Jan recommended two addresses for useful access to publications, as follows-

| Thanks to Rob van Gent from the Hastro mail list, I found the link:
|
| http://trials.galegroup.com/nlw2006/history.html
|
| or maybe closer to the source:
|
| http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO;jsessionid=A5B58FB55FB637733D4FAF07BA081687?locID=nlw2006
|
| You can download whole trucks of the old English navigational literature
| from the 18th century there - in batches of 50 PDF-pages. I have gained all
| Maskelyne's texts in this way, Robertson's, Moore's, Collier's, Kelly's
| navigation manuals, Shepherd's lunar inspection tables from 1772 (1117
| pages, I saw this title physically for the first time in my life), Nautical
| Almanacs for 1769,1772,1774,1787 and more.
|
| I make the appeal to George Huxtable - what report on Cook's voyages is the
| most interesting for us archeonavigators? There are some eight titles on
| Cook's voyages on the site.
|
| Can somebody propose some other titles that can be interesting for this mail
| list? Let us draw water from the well, until id dries - I heard that this
| possibility of downloading shall end on the 30th April, although there is no
| such remark on the pages themselves.

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

I tried the second (long) web address, and got to a request for me to provide 
an access code. It wasn't satisfied with a blank.

However, the address-
http://trials.galegroup.com/nlw2006/history.html
seems to provide the goldmine that Jan describes.

Not having broadband access (yet) I haven't tried to survey what it carries, but it looks very valuable.

Jan asks about publications about the Cook voyages. I have on my own shelves 
the 4-volume Hakluyt Society edition by J C Beaglehole,
from the late 1960s, so haven't really needed to delve into contemporary 
accounts.  However, those published works, best-sellers in
their time, were-

First voyage: Hawkesworth, John. An account of the voyages undertaken ... for 
making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, 3 vols,
London 1773.
Second voyage. Cook, James. A Voyage towards the South Pole and round the 
World ... in the Years 1772, 1773, 1774, and 1775, 2 vols
London 1777.
Third voyage. A voyage to the Pacific Ocean in the years 1776, 1777, 1778, 
1779, and 1780 ... Vol I and II written by Captain J
Cook, vol III by Captain J King, ed. John Douglas, 3 vols, London, 1784.

There exists a good account of the astro-navigation of Cook's voyages (and 
others, such as Wallis in the Dolphin) in William Wales'
"Astronomical Observations made in the Voyages ... for making Discoveries in 
the Southern Hemisphere", London 1788. Wales didn't go
on Cook's first voyage, but has analysed the records of Green, who died.

I haven't checked whether those works are included in the archive that Jan 
refers to, but if they are, they would be well worth
downloading, to those with an interest in such matters and a broadband connection.

One question worth asking is whether that archive includes good facsimiles of 
charts, maps and illustrations, as well as the text.

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

Perhaps Jan can enlighten us about the current state of the Hastro list, about 
the history of astronomy. On and off, I've been a
subscriber to that list, but not over recent years. I had got put off by a 
preponderance of postings about early belief-systems, and
a lot of rather cranky stuff about "megalithic astronomy".  Everyone to his 
own taste, perhaps. What is the current ratio of
wheat-to-chaff, Jan, in your opinion? It's good to see that  Rob van Gent is 
still contributing to that list. He used to be member
of nav-l in earlier days, and seemed to know everything; a real polymath. 
Extraordinarily helpful with it to others, also!

If Jan recommends rejoining Hastro, for those with interests that lie in that 
direction, perhaps he will explain how to go about it.

George.

   

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