NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Buying secondhand maritime books.
From: Stacy Hanna
Date: 2004 Jan 31, 18:24 -0500
From: Stacy Hanna
Date: 2004 Jan 31, 18:24 -0500
I believe that you have misinterpreted what I have said. While graduates of Merchant Marine academies enter the Navy with better training in Navigation than graduates of Annapolis or ROTC, the true navigators in the Navy are the enlisted Quartermasters. In the US Navy the job of an officer is to manage his people, so while I work for the Navigator (a LT or LTJG) it is really the job of myself and the junior personnel under me to navigate the ship. I do believe that Merchant Marine officers are better Navigators than most Navy officers however I would put myself or any other senior Quartermaster up against a Merchant Officer to see who is best. While a Navy Officer might spend a year and a half of his career in the job of Navigator, I will spend my whole 20 or 30 year career making sure that those Navigators have the right answer when they need it. And my primary focus will always be navigation while a Merchant Officer will have to direct some of his attention to other aspects of his job. -----Original Message----- From: Navigation Mailing List [mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM] On Behalf Of yourname here - Henry Halboth Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 16:30 To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM Subject: Re: Buying secondhand maritime books. Also thanks to Stacy for putting in print what some of us have always known - when the USN wants a real navigator they all too frequently have had to turn to Merchant Marine officers who had to do it all themselves, every day year in and year out. This is not meant to discredit in any way those naval officers who did specialize in navigation, i.e., Ageton, Dreisenstok, etc., and provided us with very useful short tabular methods - navigators don't generally, however, become Admirals. halboth@juno.com