NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Impress your crew this way.
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2005 Mar 19, 16:57 +0000
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2005 Mar 19, 16:57 +0000
This story has little to do with navigation, but as a way to impress your crew, well, I've never seen a better one. William Scoresby the Younger was a whaling master of strongly scientific bent, who was eventually elected to the Royal Society. He made voyages each year to the "Greenland Whaling", the icy waters West of Spitzbergen. On 23rd May 1815, in the ice, he records this in his journal- "Amused the sailors by igniting their pipes with a lens made of transparent ice, which to their amazement performed the concentration without any loss to its own substance." I've never heard of such a party-trick before. Has anyone else? Scoresby must have known how to make such an ice-lens with reasonable accuracy. Unfortunately, his journal entry ends with the all-too-common note- "Several ships near - all at a loss to know where to look for fish." George. ================================================================ contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. ================================================================
