NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: mechanical chronometers
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 May 15, 22:19 -0500
Alex you wrote:
"Apparently chronometers were always expensive.
A book I am reading now mentions that there were only 44
chronometers in the whole French Navy in 1833.
Whether the rest used Lunars or just relied on dead reckoning
for longitude I don't know."
The latter two are not mutually exclusive. Standard practice on
American commercial vessels until the 1830s or so was to use DR for
longitude with occasional checks by lunars, generally every two weeks
or so. That number of chronometers sounds a bit low to me for 1833. Not
impossible, but could it be that the writer was referring to an earlier
date?
-FER
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From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2006 May 15, 22:19 -0500
Alex you wrote:
"Apparently chronometers were always expensive.
A book I am reading now mentions that there were only 44
chronometers in the whole French Navy in 1833.
Whether the rest used Lunars or just relied on dead reckoning
for longitude I don't know."
The latter two are not mutually exclusive. Standard practice on
American commercial vessels until the 1830s or so was to use DR for
longitude with occasional checks by lunars, generally every two weeks
or so. That number of chronometers sounds a bit low to me for 1833. Not
impossible, but could it be that the writer was referring to an earlier
date?
-FER
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com
To unsubscribe, send email to NavList-unsubscribe@fer3.com
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