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Among tens of interesting navigation titles on Thomson Gale Corporation pages, 
I can recommend Michael Taylor's Tables of Logarithms (seven decimal places) 
from 1772, at least their introduction from Maskelyne, on 64 pages covering 
the history of early logarithmic tables and giving insight into the pantry of 
the 18th century astronomers and calculators working on early volumes of the 
Nautical Almanac.


Dear George Huxtable, thank you very much for your warm words. I am very glad 
to see you in full activity on Nav-L.

You wrote a few days ago:

>  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.

Unfortunately, this version of Wales' summary isn't available on the site, 
only his summary of observations made during the second Cook's voyage, 
published 1777. But a similar summary from Bayly for the third voyage is 
present. I wasn't able to find anything similar for the first voyage.


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

I have found two pilots for the eastern and western hemispheres there - "The 
English Pilot ... in the Oriental Navigation" from 1755 and "The English 
Pilot describing the West India navigation from Hudson's Bay to the river 
Amazones" from 1794. Both contain plenty of maps, sketches and coastal views.


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

I can say that the tendency to delve into astropsychology of old tribes 
disappeared from Hastro :) The topics in this mailing list now concentrate on 
real and interesting problems of the history of astronomy. Of course, only a 
small minority of them refer to the nautical astronomy. But every week I find 
something valuable in postings. The hint on the Gale Collection was a bingo 
item, isn't it?


Jan Kalivoda

   

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