NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Transcription of Worsley's Log
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2009 Mar 23, 16:58 -0700
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2009 Mar 23, 16:58 -0700
Brad, you wrote: "The navigation is of interest to the list but the journey itself catches the attention of the public at large." Oh yes, of course! The journey itself was amazing, no matter how they navigated. As for the celestial sights, the purely physical challenges of taking sights in such miserable conditions were extreme. I only meant to point out in my previous message that the mathematical aspects are completely standard for that era. Although it looks alien by the standards of modern celestial navigation, there was nothing clever in any of it, and nearly any navigator alive at that time would have, or could have, used the same methods with his or her eyes closed (the "her" here is deliberate --many of the time sights in that 1896 Navigation Notebook I mentioned previously were worked up by the captain's wife). And you wrote: "This relates well back to the "Whaling and Navigation" topic, where we discussed what would be an appropriate log book. Worsley didn't use Norie's recommendation nor Bowditch's recommendation. He simply kept his book in a way that made sense to him." And indeed if you look at other logbooks from this period you will rarely find anyone working according to the prescription of the navigation manuals. Those were theoretical logbooks in Bowditch and Norie. As I've said many times, if you want to learn about the history of navigation, you have to do just what you're doing --go for the hard evidence in the logbooks and other primary source documents. One does learn something important from the navigation manuals, especially when they are freshly written or issued in a major revision (so Bowditch in 1883 reflects a considerable sense of US Navy navigation principles in that year while Bowdith in 1881, with its last significant revision in 1837, is still almost entirely a reflection of early 19th century methods on merchant vessels). But the nav manuals, Bowditch, Norie and others, are fundamentally documents in the teaching of navigation, rather than its actual practice. And incidentally, since it was a document of necessity, the Worsley logbook, from what you've described, strikes me as a combination workbook and logbook. If they had not been operating under emergency circumstances, the navigational calculations would generally have been done on scrap paper, or in a cheap notebook, or even in chalk on a slate board, and usually only the final results would have made it into the logbook. You wrote: "Perhaps obvious in hindsight, but this has been a voyage of discovery for me!" And fun, too. :-) "I wouldn't have expected Worsley to use any of the "New Navigation". Shackleton employed him because he was a talented and proven navigator." Well then, you're fortunate in approaching the subject without pre-conceived notions. This expedition took place more than twenty years after the "New Navigation" first acquired that name, and it was almost three-quarters of a century since Sumner first published his booklet explaining how to get a vessel's position by crossing two celestial LOPs. It is certainly "interesting" that the "Old Navigation" hung on for a century after Sumner. It's a topic worthy of more discussion when we all have some time... And you concluded: "That "worked" and he would have continued this, even if something "better" was available, simply because what he was doing was conservative." Yes. Also, there seems to have been a strong bias against plotting in this era. You'll even find people publishing "improved" Sumner methods which avoid any plotting. The process of calculating sums and working logarithms may have seemed more exact, more "rigorous", than crossing lines on a chart... -FER --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---