NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Mid XIX century Nav
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2005 Nov 20, 08:35 -0500
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2005 Nov 20, 08:35 -0500
Good sleuthing Frank. Anybody have any access to Portugese accounts? On Nov 20, 2005, at 3:10 AM, Frank Reed wrote: > 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