NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: The spirit of Marcq St.-Hilaire
From: Nigel Gardner
Date: 2001 Jul 10, 1:54 AM
From: Nigel Gardner
Date: 2001 Jul 10, 1:54 AM
Herbert Prinz' commentary on the origin of the 'Intercept Method' and Capt St Hilaire one could well call a bombshell thrown into the navigation world. All the commentaries that I have connect St Hilaire with the intercept method, for example F.C.Cross in 1910 in describing the Intercept method calls it the Marc St Hilaire method (commonly called New Navigation), Lecky heads a chapter with 'Finding the Sumner or Position line by the St Hilaire or Intercept Method' (this incidentally highlights the common practice at the end of the 19C of calling any astro. position line a 'Sumner line'). Harbord says ' This method was, for many years known as "New Navigation", and was introduced by Capt. Marcq St Hilaire, of the French Navy. It is now usually termed the "Intercept" method, after its prominent characteristic.' and so on Perhaps Herbert could quote his primary sources so that we could read them for ourselves. Harking back to my note that sparked off the recent correspondence on lunars which was:- Anyone out there with a good algorithm and process for longitude by lunars? George Huxtable quite rightly gently took me to task for being rather too general and the question I actually had in mind was:- In the absence of tabulated LD's, is it possible to establish longitude by means of currently available ephemeris (Nautical or Astronomical Almanacs), log. tables and a sextant? And of course without the use of calculators or computers. So far Dan Allen's response seems to be the most 'user friendly' but I have not yet had the opportunity to try it. NG