Methods of Astronomical Navigation

Abstract

I think the Institute is doing a grand job in this matter of getting to the bottom of what actually happens at sea. I give a personal ‘shabash’ to D. H. Sadler & Co. for the new Abridged Nautical Almanac, and to S. M. Burton for the first-ever really practical manual and tables, but I am now completely ‘sold’ on H.D. 486 [Tables of Computed Altitude and Azimuth] and have very little to look forward to unless it be my dream of ‘a small hopper, into which one throws two or more altitudes, turns a handle, and tears off a neatly printed position’. I can see no loss of caste to seamen in this. All I ever did know about a haversine, for example, was that it contained a conglomeration of figures which when conjoined with others, cosines and suchlike, led by tortuous and unseamanlike stages to a position line on a chart. I never felt the slightest bump when crossing over to H.D. 486, where all those abominable spherical trigonometrical triangles have already been worked out by experts who, I understand, really like 'em. So roll out that hopper.