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George,

I looked at the figure.  If they could have had a good longitude,
they would have been better off.  It doesn't matter if you're at the
latitude of the Scillies if you're not also at their longitude.

Fred Hebard

On Aug 26, 2007, at 6:07 AM, George Huxtable wrote:

>> Frank [Reed] continued-
>>
>> "The "navigational" part of the legend includes a meeting
>> of the captains of the squadron to discuss their position, that
>> they were
>> supposedly off Ushant, and the famous error in longitude. Since
>> this is a
>> navigation list, let's start there... George says this was all about
>> latitude, not longitude at all. I think it would be useful to hear
>> the
>> argument for that case. Have you studied the logbooks of the fleet? "
>
> But fig.3 from that paper is small enough to attach, so here it is.
> May
> examined 44 log-books, from various officers of the 16 surviving
> ships, and
> shows 35 of the deduced tracks, between noon 21 and noon 22
> September. These
> circles show where the officers thought themselves to be then, not
> where
> they actually were. And remember that in their own charts, Scillies
> (and
> Lizard too) were actually plotted around 10 miles further North
> than their
> true positions.
>
> Look at figure 3, and preferably read May's paper also; then make
> up your
> own mind about whether the problem was ignorance of longitude or of
> latitude. Latitude in position-finding, and latitude in placing on the
> chart.


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