NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: John D. Howard
Date: 2019 Apr 18, 11:58 -0700
Tony,
Just my 2 cents but I think you have a mis-guided sense of the math involved. As Frank Reed has noted many times, the navigators on sailing ships had the time sight for longitude and the noon sight for latitude down to a simple to follow recipy. Probobly took less than 10 minutes to do.
No advantage to a small book of Haversignes. The ship would have onboard a large refrence book anyway. Lat and Long for islands and ports, tables for distance off, tide tables, etc were needed. Look at a 19 th c. edition of Bowditch or Browns or any of the others ( sorry, don't know the names of other countries books ). My copies have 30 or 40 tables to be used by the crew for many different things, not just cel nav.
I agree with Greg that the best all-around table would be his Classic Agenton. Simple, quick, and easy to use. Great for a small boat or lifeboat nav kit but not much of an atvantage on a crewed ship that has a library of reference books.
Again, I think the math took about 10 minutes, not hours. IMHO
John H. 41N 100W
