NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Joshua Slocum's Lunar (just ONE)
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2005 Apr 18, 00:37 EDT
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2005 Apr 18, 00:37 EDT
I asked sixteen months ago if anyone knew of any actual evidence regarding Slocum's use of lunars for finding longitude on his circumnavigation. Amazingly, there is, sitting in plain sight. And it was in probably the most obvious place: the best biography of Joshua Slocum... Walter Magnes Teller spent many years researching the life of Joshua Slocum and his second bipgraphy of the man had the simple title "Joshua Slocum". Teller was interested in the man's life and his seamanship but he took no particular interest in his navigational methods. Yet hidden in one of Slocum's own letters, sent home late in the circumnavigation, is exactly the sort of documentary evidence I was hoping to find. About two-thirds of the way through his circumnavigation, Slocum spent an afternoon at the beach in the tropics south of Sumatra to write a letter home. In it he marveled at the success of his navigation. It was August 20, 1897 (Slocum had left New England 28 months earlier and would return home in 10 months) and his boat was tied up to a tree in the Keeling-Cocos islands about 750 miles south of Sumatra. On that afternoon he wrote to a friend in New York City about his experiences. Here's an extract: "Looking over the journals of all the old voyagers I see none, working the old fashioned methods, so nearly correct as the Spray has been in making her landfalls - seven times now in succession. I never did better when I had even the best of chronometers and officers to assist - now you tell me where it comes in? my "chro" is a one-dollar tin clock! And of course is almost no time piece at all - I have to boil her often to keep her at it, from noon to noon, through the months. The one thing certain about my sea reckonings: They are not kept with slavish application at all and I have been right every time and seemed to know that I was right; Even a lunar observation (so far have taken only one on the voyage) taken, of course, alone, was practically correct, I found, a few hours later, when I made the land. There was not a difference of five miles between Lunar obvs dead reckoning and the true position of the vessel assuming the longitude of the Marquesas to be correct." There is, of course, a possibility that he took another lunar after this date before he made it back to New England. I give it 50-50 odds... I hope the point is clear. Joshua Slocum did NOT circumnavigate the globe "using lunars". His circumnavigation was an example of expert navigation and seamanship, but it is connected only distantly to the era when lunar distance sights were commonly practiced at sea. Nevertheless, Slocum's romantic and personal commentary on his singular lunar observation near the Marquesas still stands as the best epitaph we could hope to have for the long lost lunars. -FER http://www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars