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    Re: Lunars in literature
    From: Greg R_
    Date: 2009 Jan 30, 15:28 -0800

    Hewitt Schlereth  wrote:
    
    > sounds like MD may be digitized and sitting somewhere searchable.
    > How do I go about it?
    
    Would this work for you?
    
    http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=2701
    
    --
    GregR
    
    
    --- On Fri, 1/30/09, Hewitt Schlereth  wrote:
    
    > From: Hewitt Schlereth 
    > Subject: [NavList 7202] Re: Lunars in literature
    > To: NavList@fer3.com
    > Date: Friday, January 30, 2009, 2:56 PM
    > Has anyone searched Moby Dick for lunars, noon sight or
    > sextant? If
    > not, sounds like MD may be digitized and sitting somewhere
    > searchable.
    > How do I go about it?
    >
    > Hewitt
    >
    > On 1/30/09, George Huxtable  wrote:
    > >
    > >  Clearly, Google Books has been busy of late
    > digitising American popular
    > >  fiction of the 19th century, and d walden has had
    > some fun searching out
    > >  references to lunars.
    > >
    > >  A repeated theme seems to be the rough-and-ready
    > American mariner, rejecting
    > >  such gimmicks as lunars and chronometers.
    > >
    > >  And that seems to have had a resonance in real life,
    > to judge by an account
    > >  by Silvio A Bedini, chronicler of American
    > technology. He quotes from
    > >  Samuel Eliot Morison,s  "The Maritime History of
    > Massachusetts 1783-1860"
    > >  (1921), who noted that even in the early nineteenth
    > century, the position of
    > >  a ship was generally still determined by dead
    > reckoning with the use of only
    > >  a compass, log line, and deep-sea lead. Among
    > examples of Atlantic voyages
    > >  made by American vessels using these traditional
    > methods, he reported that
    > >  an American vessel was seized at Christiansand,
    > Norway, because she had
    > >  arrived in port without chart or sextant. The ship
    > was freed only after
    > >  other American shipmasters in the port protested that
    > they frequently sailed
    > >  the width of the Atlantic without those aids,
    > claiming that any comptent
    > >  seaman could do so."
    > >
    > >  And such seat-of-the-pants navigation seems to have
    > applied particularly to
    > >  American whalers. Although I can't now recall
    > chaper and verse, I've read
    > >  several accounts of merchant vessels being
    > "spoken" by New England whalers,
    > >  asking for a position, who hardly knew what ocean
    > they were in. Of course,
    > >  whalers were a rather special case. They would make
    > incredible voyages from
    > >  New England ports, right through the Pacific and into
    > the Bering Straits,
    > >  away for four years or so, only sighting land on the
    > passage round the Horn,
    > >  and sometimes not even then. In mid-ocean, they
    > didn't really care exactly
    > >  where they were, not making a passage from A to B,
    > but simply wandering in
    > >  search of "fish". If these were Sperm
    > whales, these could be anywhere on the
    > >  world's oceans.
    > >
    > >  George.
    > >
    > >  contact George Huxtable, at  george@hux.me.uk
    > >  or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
    > >  or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13
    > 5HX, UK.
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > >  >
    > >
    >
    >
    
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