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George, you and I could waste years on a guy like Menzies and his daft  book.
But in the end, we would be dancing to his song. And it's worth  remembering
that most people are not stupid. That they read it does not mean  that they
believe it.

In my opinion, Menzies is just a crackpot with an  outlandish theory that
somehow strikes a nerve. There are people like him in  almost every field of
study, there's Hoagland, van Flandern, and farther afield,  Velikovsky for
astronomy. History gets Menzies.

There's a review of this  book on salon.com that starts with the following
tagline:
"The Chinese  discovered America.
Or did they? A dubious new book offers an object lesson  in amateurish
research, slapdash editing and publishing greed."

And ain't that the truth!

The rest of the review is  here:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2003/01/07/menzies/print.html

And  by the way, yes, I agree with all your points on the incompetence
displayed in  Menzies' comments on nautical astronomy. He's got a big fancy web
site, too,  where he (and members of his "team") make all sorts of other ludicrous
claims on  navigational topics, among other things.

I was a little bit curious about  HMS Rorqual since I grew up near a
submarine base and have known a fair number  of submariners. When Menzies spent those
two short years in command of it  (1968-1970), Rorqual was already old. It was
a post-war diesel-electric patrol  submarine, and apparently the only
significant event for the sub was when it  collided with a US ship in the Phillipines
on a "Friday the 13th" in 1969 (the  US vessel was tied to a pier at the
time).

On a more positive note, I  had a wonderful conversation (over a game of
pool) in Mystic recently with a  Quartermaster from a 688-class nuclear submarine.
He was quite fascinated  by navigation and even knew about lunars. I asked
him what he would like to  have most if his electronics failed (and note that
subs navigate by inertial  systems, not GPS). He said right away, "a paper chart
with a position plotted  recently", which they do in fact maintain. After
that, DR was adequate for  navigation. They don't use celestial, but they do
still look at the stars... He  mentioned what an amazing feeling it was to be the
only person topside after  surfacing in the middle of the night in the middle
of the North Atlantic --alone  on the sail of a nuclear attack submarine with
the Milky Way in all its glory  stretching from horizon to horizon.

-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N  72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars

   

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