Chart And Compass - London Zetetic Society.pdf

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THl'l NAVAL AND MERCANTILE MARINE OF ENGLAND AND
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MISTRESS OF THE SEAS.”
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CHART AND COMPASS.
A LETTER
R E S P E C T F U L L Y A D D R E S S E D TO THK O F F I C E R S OF T H E NAVAL
AND M ERCAN TI LE M A R IN E OF GREAT BRITAIN AN D AM ER ICA.
G
entlemen
,
At a time when naval men and shipowners are beginning to
inquire whether the science of navigation, with its collateral con­
ditions, is not susceptible of some measure of improvement, may we
venture to draw your attention to the undeniable fact that they are
still using a projection or Chart of the World which was invented
three centmies ago, and which has never been considered otherwise
than a make-shift, and retained only because there was no accurate
knowledge of the ocean’s surface or its configuration. But this
ignorance is hardly creditable in the present condition of our com­
mercial interests and the extent of our foreign and colonial traffic.
I f those whom it may concern are really in earnest when they
propose to take into consideration any means that may be suggested
for affording greater security in ocean travelling, and leave them less
dependent on systems of navigation which may have been considered
efficient for coasting purposes, or before our colonial empire was so
extensive as it it now, they will, I trust, be willing to admit that
not merely the substantial construction of the vessels themselves
should be practically considered, but shipowners and naval men
generally should honestly and intelligently ascertain how far their
existing charts and projections may be regarded as incapable of
improvement, or be practically relied on as affording the most
accurate information as to distances and relative position of every
principal spot on the navigable ocean.
Without any reference to existing theories, may we venture to ask
how many of our most experienced seamen and naval officers could
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say if they knew what was the actual difference between the northern
and southern meridians of longitude ? Would they not be obliged
to confess that they were navigating their ships on an artificial or
purely conjectural system of hydrography, and that the training they
had received had never taken into account the possibility of there
being a more simple and
fixv
more rational method o f navigation by
a stricter adherence to demonstrable facts instead of to artificial rules
and astronomical principles, which can have no more analogy to
tcn*estrial or water surfaces than there could be between the length
of a ship’s deck and the date of the owner's birth.
I f their system was as correct as it professes to be, ought not a
fully trained and perfectly educated officer bo able to take a ship,
say, to Malta and baek, on second or third voyage?
Instead of
which, when his theoretical education is over, he has to put his
theories in his sea chest and learn from actual observation, for many
long years, how to take a vessel, say, to the Cape o f Good H ope,
without finding
himself, some foggy morning, on the coast of
Mexico ?
We are afraid these remarks will be received with much disfarour,
and be resented as an insult to the services they are humbly in*
tended to serve* B ut we are sure the issues are too serious to admit
of any palliation, even in spite of the undeniable fact that thousands
of vessels every year find their way out and home again with the
most infallible accuracy.
B ut is this any justification for retaining
a system which has to be supplemented with the m ost voluminous
tables, and practically ignored by every experienced sailor ?
W e are merely insisting on the fact that a comparatively perfect
projection is as easy of consttuction, and a thousand times more
intelligible, than one which makes a burlesque of the whole subject,
and is as unlike what it is intended to represent as if concocted by a
village schoolboy. Whether the earth be a globe or a plane, a
square
chart, with its rectangular meridians, cannot possibly represent its
natural divisions, or define its relative distances, or give the true
position of its several continents, or the actual bearing of any spot
out ol'sight o f the
crow’s nest.’’
Any accuracy of detail is utterly
impossible under such theoretical conditions.
Sui’ely no one will venture to say that th is unoecessary and
inexcusable defect in one o f the m ost essential elem ents o f prac­
tical navigation is not a slur on tw o great m aritim e nations like
England and Am erica ?
barbarous ignorance ?
I f other countries are no wiser, is that
Our A dm iralty and Boards o f Trade are,
W e are, therefore, the more inex­
any reason wliy we should persist in settin g such an example o f
unfortunately, regarded as oracular on all subjects relating to sea­
m anship and naval science.
in our own principles.
W e are ashamed to have to in sist that the proper construction
o f our charts o f the habitable world is as easily determined, and
the distances as accurately laid down, and the latitudes and lon gi­
tudes as m athem atically infallible, as w^ould be the plan of an
estate o f a few hundred acres.
A nd yet, in th is professedly m ost
enlightened age, we ^re still using a square chart, with every
figure and line o f it wrong, and as unlike the real earth and its
waters as the ingenuity o f man could c o n c e iv e !
not to know their right hand from their left ?
The distances on Mercator’s chart are com puted on the arc
m easurem ent, when no such shape as 'a curve can anywhere be
found !
So there are not 90 degrees north or south of the Equator,
M eridians o f longitude cannot
p o ssib ly
be parallel,
M ercator’s straight edge is as preposterous as a
but only 57^ degi’ees ; barely 45 degrees of which are practically
navigable !
cumference.
but
m ust
be
divergeyit
from tlie central north to the southern cir­
South Polar centre !
B u t, w ithout pursuing th is su bject further, we are quite pre­
pared to show that the topography o f the circular plane on which
we live, adm its o f exactly tlie same infallible accuracy as the com­
pilation o f the m ultiplication table.
B y using the present im perfect and m ost m isleading projections,
ships m ust inevitably wander hundreds o f m iles out o f their direct
courses ; w'hile tim e and m oney and valuable cargoes are often
risked, merely because the authorities
t hom e think they would
Is not such
ignorance as pitiable in our case as when the N in evites were said
cusable for encouraging others to retain what w^e dare not defend
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forfeit a certain amount of prestige by abandoning their time-
honoured fallacies.
I f the Royal Geographical Societies of England, Scotland, and
Ireland cannot give you better instructions, on what grounds, it
may be asked, do these scientific Associations venture to collect
incomes of £6,000 or £8,000 a year each^ and obtain royal
charters for diffusing imposture and fraud and fiction ?
Now let us make a few practical remarks on the quadrant and
sun-dial.
From models or specimens now to be seen in the
British LIuseum, we learn that tlie quadrant was known and used
£0
early as the end of the 14th century, or several hundred years
before sailors ever dreamed they were sailing on tiie surface of a
spherical ocean.
The inventor, therefore, never contemplated
its employment otherwise than on an horizontal base, at right
angles to the sun’s vertical rays or to the perpendicular of any
other distant o b je c t; and it can, by no possibility, give a true
elevation, if used on any other con d ition s! I f these absolute
conditions are not'practically complied with, the observers would
have three-fourths of their time occupied in making
allowance
for curvature’' which it is well known they are never insane
enough to think of.
Again, all observers arc supposed to be on one and the same
horizontal base, so that a greater angle than 90 degrees is never
contemplated or provided for or obtainable in any survey tliat can
be made !
Every arctic explorer knows that in the latitude, say, of
Behring’s Straits, or Hudson’s Bay, an observation of the sun can
be made at midnight, looking
d m north;
which would be physi­
cally
impossible
if a large segment of a circle intervened between
the observer and the June solstice; looking over the North
“ Pole !”
How discreditable it is to two such maritime nations as E ng­
land and America, to say nothing of the other European govern­
ments, that such gross and wiiolly inexcusable ignorance on some
of the most important points and the most elementary conditions
in navigation should still p revail!

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