NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Peter Hakel
Date: 2010 Jul 28, 20:28 -0700
In this excerpt from Cook's logbook (see linked German translation on a plaque in a Vienna museum) there are two details that caught my attention. First, these are the native names of five Hawaiian islands, only some of which seem to me to correspond to the names used today. With my guesses in parentheses they are:
Atoui
Eneeheeou (Ni'ihau?)
Orrehoua,
Otaoora,
Woahoo (O'ahu?)
Can anybody complete/correct this list? Wikipedia states that Cook reported the native name of the entire archipelago as "Owyhee" which might sound like Hawai'i. This is also the name of the Big Island - yet this name is missing on this list.
The second detail pertains to the use of "east longitude" of about 200 degrees. My question is how captains handled the "Prime Antimeridian" in an era long before the official establishment of the International Date Line. Was it a personal choice, within reason, for each captain? Why would Cook write "200 degrees east" rather than "160 degrees west" longitude?
Peter Hakel
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