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Herbert,

I've been wondering about that!  It at least indicates an awareness of
the procedure.

Further on, he is very specific about the longitude in which he crossed
the equator.  Then comes a passage that may have been cited already,
evidence against him taking lunars at that point in his voyage:

"On one of the very fine days experienced after leaving Rio, the
steamship South Wales spoke the Spray and unsolicited gave the
longitude by chronometer as 48? W., "as near as I can make it," the
captain said. The Spray, with her tin clock, had exactly the same
reckoning. I was feeling at ease in my primitive method of navigation,
but it startled me not a little to find my position by account verified
by the ship's chronometer."

I might add that he was coasting on the way down from Rio, so may have
been getting fixes by reference to land.  Also, in the passage down
past the Cape Verdes, he had fairly frequent landfalls, so may not have
felt he drifted enough from his DR position to need to find his
longitude by lunar, which is not precise enough, in general, to trust
for a close approach to land.

Fred

On Dec 12, 2003, at 12:43 PM, Herbert Prinz wrote:

> Hello Fred,
>
> I can't follow the logic of your argument. Why does this statement
> imply
> that Slocum made more than one lunar observation?
>
> Herbert Prinz
>
>
> Fred Hebard wrote:
>
>> Here's one
>> statement implying he made more than that one in the South Pacific.
>> After leaving Gibralter in Chapter 5, he says, "On September 10 the
>> Spray passed the island of St. Antonio, the northwesternmost of the
>> Cape Verdes, close aboard. The landfall was wonderfully true,
>> considering that no observations for longitude had been made."  This
>> implies he may have made more than that one in the South Pacific, but
>> also indicates he kept a close DR.
>

   

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