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Frank wrote:

"There's also Crowninshield's yacht "Cleopatra's Barge" in 1817 which was
visited by that famous lunarian expert Baron von Zach who was astounded to
discover that the whole crew knew and worked lunars."

Now there's a sweeping statement! And it's mighty exaggerated. Going back to
what Frank himself has
"written about all of this on NavList before" in the archive (a neat
resource, by the way, Frank, say thankya) I found this:

"'The greatest part of the seamen on board the Barge,' said Mr.
Crowninshield, 'can use the sextant and make nautical
calculations.'"[NavList 3333]

Of course it is a nice story, but not history. So far I have not even been
able to verify that von Zach actually wrote this. The story (that is: the
version with the black cook who casually talked about the different methods
of clearing the distance) is told in a few New England newspapers that say
von Zach wrote about it in his "Monatliche Korrespondenz". Unfortunately the
last volume of that publication appeared in 1813 whereas the event
supposedly happened in 1817, the year when - as can be verified by several
accounts - "Cleopatra's Barge" was in the Med.

To use this story as a historical fact - telling us anything about nautical
proficiency aboard American vessels at that time - one would have

1) to take at face value that von Zach clearly understood what was said to
him - and we don't know anything about his command of the English language

and

2) we'd have to take at face value that what he was told was true, because
von Zach doesn't say that he actually saw the greatest part of the seamen
use the sextant and make nautical calculations.

Now the assumption that such a statement were true is quite inferior to the
assumption that Mr. Crowninshield - a man who obviously did not count
modesty among his weaknesses - tried to impress a European savant by
boasting about the abilities of his crew.

To sum it up: This is not PRIMARY SOURCE EVIDENCE (your emphasis, Frank).
Treating it as such is naive. It is oral history at best and has to be
weighed carefully instead of taking it at face value.

Best regards
Wolfgang


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