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Malham's 1795 Gazetteer lists a "Nangansaqui" in Lat 32-31 N + Long
128-48 E, and further identifies Dutch Factors as resident on a nearby
island of Disnia who were ..."never suffered to come within the city,
except on arrival of their ships; at which time they are obliged to
deliver up their guns, rudders, falls and rigging, as pledges of their
good behavior." Seems like the Dutch may have gotten to Japan before many
of the others did.

Nevertheless, as I briefly posted previously, conventional wisdom would
require knowledge of Longitude for the rating of chronometers by the
usual methods available to seamen. Obviously, there was some early on
knowledge of Longitude on the coasts of Japan - probably established by
the Dutch traders.

Henry

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 03:10:14 EST Frank Reed  writes:
> Bruce Stark wrote:
> "The 1804 Moore lists  three places on Kuisin Island. "Nangasaki" is
> given as
> 32d, 52' N; 130d, 42' E.
> The 1848 Norie lists eighteen places on Kiusiu Island. "Nangasaki
> City" is
> given as 32d, 45' N; 129d, 52' E.
> The two navigation manuals spell  "Nangasaki" the same, but have
> different
> spellings for the island. "
>
> And  Paul Flint asked:
> "Is the diference in spelling significant?"
>
> I very  much doubt it. I think it's nothing more than early
> difficulties
> transliterating  Japanese place names into European characters.
> Later in the 19th
> century, as  more Europeans and Americans learned Japanese and its
> extremely
> simple phonetic  system, that second "n" would have seemed like an
> error. It's
> listed as  "Nagasaki" by the beginning of the 20th century in two
> books I
> consulted.
>
> And of course there are simple typographic errors. For example, the
> 1826
> Bowditch lists "Nangasky Harbor ent." at 32 44N and 129 46E. By 1842
> and through
> the 1870s, the spelling in Bowditch is corrected to "Nangasaky" but
> otherwise
>  everything else is the same. Also, the "Kuisin" in 1804 Moore which
> Bruce
> quoted  is bound to be an error that occurred during the manual
> copying process,
>  possibly years earlier. The island in question is, of course, the
> big island
>  Kyushu (as it's spelled today) and the spelling in the later 19th
> century
> navigation manuals was "Kiusiu", which sounds about the same as
> Kyushu. But if
> you write down Kiusiu in script and then ask someone to copy it
> over, you
> could  easily wind up with Moore's "Kuisin". This same"Kuisin" is in
> Norie in
> 1819.
>
> Here's a nice brief history of Russian naval adventures in
> Nagasaki:
> http://www.uwosh.edu/home_pages/faculty_staff/earns/askold.html
>
> And  try googling "Nangasaky  NYPL":
> http://www.google.com/search?as_q=nangasaky+nypl
>
> This will take  you to a digital library site at the New York Public
> Library
> with a nice chart  of the harbor of Nagasaki prepared by the famous
> Russian
> naval officer I.F.  Kruzenshtern in about 1805. If you go to the
> enlarged
> version, you can just  about make out the latitude and longitude of
> the city on the
> chart as: 32 44  (and some seconds) N and some longitude which maybe
> reads 230
> 07 "W von  Greenwich". It's interesting that the Russian chart,
> published in
> German, is  already referencing longitudes to Greenwich at this
> early date.
>
> It seems  safe to assume that navigators near Nagasaki in the 1850s
> could
> have confidence  in the charted longitude to within a few miles at
> least, and so
> by doing some  accurate time sights with an artificial horizon from
> some shore
> point they could  get the chronometer error and (with a few
> repetitions) the
> rate as well with  good accuracy.
>
> -FER
> 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N  72.1W.
> www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
>

   

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