'-\ 
 
 <LV'- 
 
 
 Jgautical Sns^trumentsJ 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ROBINSON 
 
 
 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
 1921 
 
 L
 
 r \i fv A n 
 
 ONE HUNDRED COPIES 
 DEPRINTED FROM 
 
 #lb=i;ime i^eto Cnglanb 
 
 APRIL, 1921
 
 Salt Glaze Stone 
 Historic 
 
 One of the rar 
 cylindrical drinki ^ 
 infrequent specln e 
 18th centurj' dev|| 
 which has some 
 in this country, 
 of this salt g-laze no^ 
 
 X^are in 
 Anlherst Tavern 
 
 ■pes of the small 
 lUg-s is the vei-y 
 1 salt glaze, that 
 ent of stoneware 
 devoted followers 
 .'gi'eater proportion 
 found in shops and 
 
 JCSB LIBRARY 
 
 collections came from the Staffordshire 
 towns. It is distinguishable by its light 
 ness, the brittle crispness of ithe moulded 
 ornament, the thin body, and sparseness 
 of decoration. The salt .giaze mug here- 
 with illustrated, is oae of the very 
 earliest tvpes in which the simplified de- 
 sign is incised very sketchily into the 
 clay, and a blue rubbed in, prior to 
 firin'g the piece. It was produced near 
 the middle of the 18th century, and has 
 been pronounced by no less an authority 
 than Albert J. Hill of Boston to be one 
 of the finest of its type. The photo- 
 graph above was furnished by Miss Carol 
 Scheid, charming secretary to Mrs. Kim- 
 ball, whose immense collection of early 
 mugs graces the Dickinson-Baggs Tavern 
 in Amherst.
 
 f 
 
 
 «^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 SHIP GRAND TURK. 1786 
 
 OLD-TIME NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS 
 
 By John Robinson 
 
 Curator of the Marine Room, Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass. 
 
 WHAT sort of instruments did 
 the Colonial ship-masters car- 
 ry? What did they have on 
 the Mayflower? What did Columbus 
 use? And, to come down to com- 
 paratively recent times, what instru- 
 ments were available and were actu- 
 ally used on the vessels during the 
 commercial-marine activities following 
 the American Revolution and up to the 
 time of the appearance of steamships? 
 These questions are often asked, 
 not only by landsmen but by seafaring 
 men as well. The ship-master of to- 
 day uses instruments so different from 
 those of Colonial times, or even of the 
 earlier years of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, that unless he has a penchant 
 for research he knows nothing about 
 the earlier ones and certainly not how 
 to use them if by chance they come 
 to his notice. Holding in his hand a 
 Davis quadrant, the skilful navigator 
 of Salem's last square-rigger, the ship 
 Mindoro, which passed out of service 
 in 1897, said to the writer: — "I have 
 no idea how to use it and I do not 
 
 believe that there is a ship-master sail- 
 ing out of Boston today who does." 
 The Davis quadrant was in common 
 use all through the eighteenth century 
 and probably later. It is figured and 
 explained in a book on navigation in 
 1796. There are two in the Peabody 
 Museum collection in Salem, dated 
 respectively, 1768 and 1773, and an 
 undated one in the collection is cer- 
 tainly older. Only the student of the 
 history of navigation can explain them 
 or their uses. The English navigator, 
 John Davis, the inventor of this quad- 
 rant, in his "Seaman's Secrets", print- 
 ed in 1594, gives a list of instruments 
 which should be taken on ships, but it 
 is to be feared few vessels carried them 
 all or that owners were able to provide 
 them. It included, — sea-compass, 
 cross-staff, chart, quadrant, astrolabe, 
 instrument to test compass variation, 
 horizontal plane sphere, and paradox- 
 ical compass. 
 
 No one knows exactly what instru- 
 ments Columbus took with him on his 
 voyage in 1492. He undoubtedly had
 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY SPANISH ASTROLABE 
 Full size. From Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
 
 UNIVERSAL RING-DIAL 
 Diameter 3 1-2 inches. Owned by Mr. Parker Kemble. 
 
 an astrolabe and a cross-staff. The 
 astrolabe was devised during the first 
 millennium and Arabian astronomers 
 had perfected it as early as the year 
 700. It is really the basis of all fu- 
 ture instruments of its class, — cross- 
 staff, quadrant, sextant. Some of the 
 most beautiful astrolabes preserved in 
 museums are those made for the Per- 
 sian astronomers in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries. Columbus prob- 
 ably used the form devised by Martin 
 Behaim which had been adapted for 
 use at sea about the year 1480. Ob- 
 servations with the astrolabe required 
 three persons, one to hold the instru- 
 ment plumb by the ring, another to 
 sight the sun and adjust the arm, and 
 the third to read the scale. With these 
 difficulties observations were, of 
 
 course, far from accurate, but approx- 
 imate time and latitude could be ob- 
 tained. Another device was the ring- 
 dial, or universal ring-dial as the old 
 works on navigation called it. This 
 differed from the astrolabe by having 
 adjustable rings with the hours and 
 scales engraved upon them. Both of 
 these instruments are now rare. 
 
 Xo original cross-staff is known to 
 the writer in any collection in this 
 country. It consisted of a rod thirty- 
 six inches long on which another of 
 twenty-six inches was centered and ar- 
 ranged to slide up and down -at right 
 angles to it. By sighting from the 
 end of the longer rod and moving the 
 sliding bar until the sun was seen at 
 one end of it and the horizon at the 
 other, the figure on the scale at the
 
 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARINER 
 
 USING A CROSS-STAFF 
 
 From Seller's "Practical Navigation," 
 
 London, 1676 
 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARINER 
 
 USING DAVIS' QUADRANT 
 
 From Seller's "Practical Navigation," 
 
 London, 1676 
 
 junction of the rods indicated the sun's 
 altitude and from this the latitude was 
 obtained. 
 
 Based on this instrument, by laying 
 out the circle on a table, John Davis, 
 the explorer, devised his quadrant in 
 1586. At first the observer used it 
 by facing the sun, as the cross-staff 
 had been used, but a better form was 
 made later where the observer had the 
 sun at his back. This instrument has 
 been called by sailors "jackass quad- 
 rant" and, supposedly from its shape, 
 "hog-yoke." In early books on navi- 
 gation it is called "sea-quadrant." The 
 earlier form used by the observer 
 standing back to the sun had a solid 
 "shade vane" which slid along the 
 smaller arc of the instrument. By 
 adjusting this a little short of the sup- 
 posed altitude of the sun and sighting 
 the horizon through the minute hole 
 in the "sight vane" until it was seen 
 
 through the "horizon vane" at the apex 
 of the instrument, and then gradually 
 moving the "sight vane" along the 
 larger arc until the shadow of the 
 "shade vane" met the horizon line, 
 the sum of the degrees on the two 
 scales indicated the sun's altitude. This 
 was really the second form of the 
 Davis quadrant. In the third, the solid 
 "shade vane" was replaced by one with 
 a low-power lens inserted in it ar- 
 ranged to focus on the "horizon vane," 
 thus approaching the idea of the re- 
 flected sun in the Hadley quadrant and 
 the sextant. A most interesting instru- 
 ment, half-way between a cross-staff 
 and the Davis quadrant, is illustrated 
 in Seller's book on navigation pub- 
 lished in 1676. He calls it a "Plough." 
 Above, it has the small arc of the 
 Davis quadrant with the sliding rod of 
 the cross-staff^ below. These were, of 
 course, imperfect instruments, but still
 
 Sect, 
 
 ne Defcription of the Flough^ 
 
 The Ffgme of the TIqh^, 
 
 
 asE 
 
 
 The Staff is about two foot and a half long, or three foot at the moff \ 
 at the Center-end of which is erei^ed a fmall Arch, that is divided into 
 85 degrees \ on the fide of the Staff are fet off the Graduations proper to 
 the Plough, beginning at five or fix degrees » and encreafing to ten 
 degrees towards the Arch, every degree being diyided into fingle 
 mmutes* . {' i 
 
 The Vanes are a Horizon-Vane, as A, zni Shadop^ Vam-i as B, (to be 
 ufed as in the Quadrant; and a Sight-Vaw moving upon the Staff^as atC, 
 
 PAGE FROM "PRACTICAL NAVIGATION," BY JOHN SELLERS. LONDON, 1676
 
 DAVIS QUADRANT 
 " Made by William Williams in Kingf St. Boston." 
 An ivory plate has "Malachi Allen 1769." Mahog- 
 any, 24 inches long, convex glass in the shade vane; 
 fine example of cabinet work. In Peabody Mu- 
 seum, Salem. 
 
 a great advance over previous devices 
 to obtain time and latitude. 
 
 The Davis quadrants are usually 
 made of ebony, rosewood, or other 
 dark woods, with boxwood scale arcs 
 and could be made by expert wood- 
 workers. The numerous examples pre- 
 served attest the skill of the old cab- 
 inet-makers, for they are never warped 
 or twisted while their jointing is a 
 Chinese puzzle. Probably the May- 
 flozver carried* a Davis quadrant and 
 quite likely an astrolabe, and of course, 
 a compass, for the compass had been 
 in use for two centuries. 
 
 Whether the compass was independ- 
 ently invented in Europe or was bor- 
 rowed from the Chinese is uncertain. 
 The old marine compasses were set in 
 gimbals. The magnet was a thin bar 
 attached, usually with sealing wax, to 
 the under side of the compass card, the 
 whole mounted in a thin bowl of 
 turned wood. These were the com- 
 passes of the eighteenth century. There 
 is one in the Salem collection inscribed, 
 — "Benjamin King Salem in New 
 England", with the date "1770" cut 
 in the box; another has the mark of 
 Benjamin King, 1790. A surveyor's 
 compass, wooden throughout, including 
 wooden sights, is inscribed, — "Made 
 by James Halsey near ye draw bridge 
 Boston." The liquid compass first 
 suggested by Francis Crow in 1813 
 and improved by E. S. Ritchie of Bos- 
 ton, has largely displaced the older 
 devices. 
 
 The "nocturnal", used at night, as 
 its name signifies, appeared at an early 
 date, exactly when it does not seem 
 possible to say. One in the Salem col- 
 lection is marked, — "Nathaniel Viall 
 1724". By adjusting the movable discs 
 to the date on the scale for the day of 
 the month, sighting the north star 
 through the hole in the center and then 
 bringing the arm against the "guard 
 stars", the hour was indicated with 
 reasonable accuracy. Good pictures 
 and descriptions of the nocturnal may 
 be found in old books on navigation. 
 
 In 1730, John Hadley in England 
 and Thomas Godfrey in Philadelphia, 
 independently invented the octant, 
 known for nearly two hundred years 
 as Hadley's quadrant. Both Hadley 
 and Godfrey received awards for their 
 devices. Although called quadrant in 
 this country it is generally known 
 elsewhere as octant, which is the bet- 
 ter name, for the instrument repre- 
 sents but one eighth of the circle. By 
 the principle of reflection, however, it 
 covers ninety degrees and the scale
 
 is so marked. The Davis quadrant 
 with its two arcs does represent one 
 fourth of the circle and for that in- 
 strument the name is correct. 
 
 The Hadley was a great improve- 
 ment over the Davis quadrant and 
 other older devices for finding lati- 
 tude. By moving the arm the sun is 
 reflected by the mirror at the apex 
 and "brought down" to the horizon 
 line and the eye is protected by col- 
 ored glasses of various degrees of den- 
 sity through which the sun's rays 
 shine. Catching the sun the instant 
 it is on the meridian (noon), the scale 
 indicates the altitude by which the 
 latitude was figured with the Bow- 
 ditch Navigator, used for more than 
 one hundred years by American sea- 
 men, or Moore's before that and 
 numerous others back to the early 
 eighteenth century. The Hadley quad- 
 rant is still used in its modern form 
 with telescopic eye-pieces although the 
 sextant — one-sixth of the circle and 
 by reflection one-third — is a more ac- 
 curate instrument and also may be 
 used to make lunar observations to ob- 
 tain longitude, a complicated and dif- 
 ficult matter, so difficult that the au- 
 thors of the older works did not even 
 take trouble to explain the process, for 
 only the most expert could make this 
 observation, nor were the results sat- 
 isfactory. 
 
 The sextant was devised about 1757 
 and as now made is framed wholly of 
 metal. To prevent corrosion, the scale, 
 which is minutely divided, and has a 
 "vernier" . with a magnifying glass 
 to show divisions of minutes, is made 
 of gold or platinum in the best instru- 
 ments. A half-circle has been devised 
 and is exceedingly rare. An example 
 in the Salem collection was made be- 
 fore 1818. A curious double-jointed 
 dividers accompanied it and the entry 
 in the museum catalog reads, — "used 
 to correct a lunar observation for long- 
 itude." A full "circle of reflection" 
 
 NOCTURNAL 
 
 "Nath'll Viall 1 724." Boxwood, arm seven inches 
 from centre to tip. In Peabody Museum, Salem. 
 
 is also sometimes used, more often on 
 land than at sea. This is a beautiful 
 instrument and is not often met with 
 in collections or in use. All of these 
 instruments are similar in character 
 and may be traced, as previously 
 stated, to the ancestral astrolabe. 
 
 The early Hadley quadrants were 
 huge afi"airs made of wood with an 
 arm twenty-four inches in length. To- 
 day they are more generally of metal 
 with arms from ten to twelve inches. 
 Using the sextent or Hadley quad- 
 rant the observer stands facing the 
 sun, but old Hadley quadrants were 
 made with a "back sight" so that they 
 could be used like the Davis quadrant, 
 thus making two independent observa- 
 tions the average of which would en- 
 sure greater accuracy. 
 
 To obtain the ship's latitude with 
 comparatively good results was an
 
 HADLEY QUADRANTS (OCTANTS) IN PEABODY MUSEUM, SALEM 
 
 1. "Made by John Dupee 1755 for Patrick 
 Montgomerie." All wood, ebony, arm 22 inches 
 long. 
 
 2. "Made by Ino. Gilbert on Tower Hill 
 London for Hector Orr Augt. 6, 1768." Ebony, 
 arm 20 inches long. 
 
 3. "Norie & Co. London." Ebony and brass, ca. 1840. Arm 11 3-4 inches, 
 telescopic eyepieces, used by Capt. John Hodges. 
 
 4. "Spencer Browning and Rust London." 
 Ebony frame, breiss arm 17 inches, ivory scale, 
 pencil inserted in cross piece, ca. 1800, used by 
 Capt. Henry King. 
 
 5. "J: Urings London." All brass, arm 20 
 inches, back sight broken off, ca. 1780, rare.
 
 easy matter with the quadrant and its 
 fore-runners, but the great problem 
 for centuries was how to find the long- 
 itude, now universally and quickly 
 obtained by the chronometer and sim- 
 ple observations in the morning or at 
 noon. Spring clocks and watches ap- 
 peared about 1530 but they were un- 
 reliable and of no use on long voyages. 
 Sand glasses like those of the old Colo- 
 nial churches were used on ships and 
 so conservative is the British mind that 
 some were in use on British naval ves- 
 sels as late as 1828 and one authority 
 states as late as 1839. Greenwich Ob- 
 servatory was established in 1675 and 
 a Royal Commission was soon ap- 
 pointed with authority to award prizes 
 for important inventions in aid ot nav- 
 igation. A prize of £20,000 was finally 
 offered for a time-keeper that should 
 meet certain requirements which prac- 
 tically meant absolute accuracy. In 
 1767, John Harrison produced the 
 chronometer, based on the principle of 
 an invention of 1735, and eventually 
 he received the reward. Chronometers 
 were so expensive and so hard to ob- 
 tain that few New England ships had 
 them until more than a half a century 
 later. Other devices were tried to ob- 
 tain longitude by lunar observations 
 and by Jupiter's satellites, but these 
 observations were too difficult to be 
 of practical use. Today, fine watches 
 serve for short trips and chronometers 
 are carried by nearly all vessels mak- 
 ing long voyages. 
 
 That so important an Instrument as 
 a telescope or spy-glass is rarely men- 
 tioned In books on navigation or in 
 sea journals seems strange. It is ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to obtain informa- 
 tion of any being taken to sea, al- 
 though one would think a spy-glass 
 would be about the first aid on ship- 
 board especially when skirting the 
 coast. Telescopes did not become of 
 practical use, even if the principle had 
 been known, until thev were made in 
 
 Holland in 1608. It is at least certain 
 that Columbus did not have one and 
 probably there was none on the May- 
 jlozuer, although its passengers had 
 recently .come from Holland where 
 telescopes were invented a few years 
 before. So far no references to them 
 have been found in a rather casual ex- 
 amination of old log-books. 
 
 In the Alarine Room Collection of 
 the Peabody Museum at Salem, is a 
 spy-glass four feet long, octagonal in 
 form, two and one-half Inches in di- 
 ameter, with a short focusing tube. 
 It was taken from a British prize ves- 
 sel off the coast of Ireland, in 1779, 
 by Capt. James Barr in his Salem pri- 
 vateer. Another glass of similar form, 
 but longer and with a mahogany case, 
 was used on a United States naval ves- 
 sel about 1815. The spy-glass, famil- 
 iar to everyone, in two or three sec- 
 tions, was used at sea through the first 
 half of the nineteenth century and is 
 often seen tucked under the left arm, 
 in the portraits of ship-masters 
 brought home from foreign ports. 
 Many of these were excellent instru- 
 ments, especially those from Dollond 
 of London. There is also In the Salem 
 collection a rude telescope or spy- 
 glass five and one-half feet long with 
 a copper case about three inches in 
 diameter looking precisely like a sec- 
 tion from a house water-conductor. 
 It focuses by a small upper sliding sec- 
 tion, fitted like a stove funnel. This 
 glass was brought from Nagasaki, Ja- 
 pan, by a Salem ship-master about 
 1865. It had been used there to ob- 
 serve vessels coming into the harbor. 
 It may be Dutch and it Is evidently 
 very old. 
 
 The speed of a vessel was first ob- 
 tained by throwing overboard a float- 
 ing subject at the bow and noting the 
 time elapsed when It passed an ob- 
 server at the stern. From this the log 
 line with ''knots" was derived, with 
 the fourteen and twentv-eight seconds
 
 SEXTANTS IN PEABODY MUSEUM. SALEM 
 
 1. ''Bradford London." 
 •cale arm 14 inches long, c 
 George Bailey before 1840. 
 
 Brass frame and silver 
 . 1815, used by Capt. 
 
 2. "L. Bleuler, London." Ebony frame, ivory 
 scale, brass arm 14 inches long, ca. 1820, came from 
 Plymouth, Mass. 
 
 3. "G. Gowland 76 Castle St. Liverpool." Used by David Livingstone in his Afri- 
 can explorations and after his death sold at Zanzibar by order of the Royal Geograph- 
 ical Society and bought by Capt. William Beadle, of Salem, and used on some of his 
 ▼oyages. 
 
 10
 
 sand glasses to record speed. A "knot" 
 indicates a geographical or sea mile 
 which has been standardized at 6080 
 feet; the land or statute mile is 5280 
 feet, therefore, if a vessel is said to be 
 sailing at the rate of thirteen knots, 
 a railroad train going at the same 
 speed would be running at the rate of 
 fifteen miles an hour. The term "knot" 
 is used solely to indicate rate of speed; 
 the distance covered is always stated 
 in nautical or sea miles. "Heaving the 
 log" meant throwing out from the 
 stern of a vessel a small float attached 
 to a line running from a reel held clear 
 of the rail, the float remaining sta- 
 tionary in the water. At the instant 
 the log is "heaved" a sand glass is 
 turned. On the line are knots (hence 
 the term), pieces of marline or rags 
 tied through the strands and spaced 
 the same fraction of a mile apart, — 
 above forty-six feet and six inches, — 
 which twenty-eight seconds is the 
 fraction of an hour, — about one one- 
 hundred and twenty-eighth. Therefore, 
 using a twenty-eight seconds glass and 
 checking the line the instant the sand 
 runs out, the number of knots and 
 fractions paid out on the line will at 
 once indicate the number of sea miles 
 per hour which the vessel is going. 
 This, of course, is doubled if the four- 
 teen-seconds glass is used, which is 
 done when the vessel is going very fast. 
 
 The old log lines have been super- 
 seded by many forms of the "patent 
 log" and the museum is indeed for- 
 tunate which possesses an original log 
 line, reel and float in perfect condition. 
 There is an excellent example in the 
 museum collections of the Marblehead 
 Historical Society. Once discarded, 
 the lines were soon used to tie up 
 packages and the reels and floats were 
 thrown away. The patent log with its 
 revolving blades, now universal, was 
 devised by Humfray Cole in 1578; 
 it was improved by various persons 
 from time to time but, strange to say, 
 
 did not come into general use for near- 
 ly three centuries. The rotating blades 
 in the water record the rate on an in- 
 dicator on the vessel which may be 
 read at any time. So far, the earliest 
 reference to the use of a device of this 
 sort among our New England navi- 
 gators is the "Gould's patent log" used 
 by Captain George Crowninshield on 
 his famous yacht Cleopatra's Barge 
 during the voyage to the Mediterran- 
 ean in 1817. 
 
 Charts were made in very ancient 
 times but they were crude and almost 
 useless. The first nautical maps ap- 
 peared in Italy at the end of the thir- 
 teenth century, and it is said that 
 Bartholomew Columbus brought the 
 first one to England in 1489. The 
 close of the sixteenth century saw 
 many map makers at work, including 
 Gerard ^Iercator whose name is per- 
 petuated in the familiar scale charts 
 in our geographies known as "Merca- 
 tor's projection" which were the sea 
 charts in general use. Globes w^ere 
 carried on ships in preference to charts 
 in the early days and what is known as 
 "great circle" sailing was evolved from 
 them. Davis describes it in 1594 and 
 it is possible that Cabot knew of the 
 theory a century before. Such a sim- 
 ple instrument as a parallel ruler was 
 not invented until late in the sixteenth 
 century and tables of logarithms and 
 Gunter's scale by which navigators 
 make all their calculations were not 
 known until the year the Mayflower 
 sailed. 
 
 During the first century following 
 the settlement of New England it is 
 probable that the small coasting and 
 fishing vessels were navigated by dead 
 reckoning and not venturing far be- 
 yond the sight of land a compass was 
 the only instrument carried. But the 
 larger vessels sailing from Boston, 
 Salem, Portsmouth, Newport and other 
 ports on voyages to the West Indies, 
 England and Spain, it would seem 
 
 11
 
 should have carried instruments with 
 which observations could be made to 
 obtain their approximate position. Mr. 
 George Francis Dow has searched the 
 early probate records of Essex County 
 coast towns between 1634 and 1680, a 
 period of nearly fifty years, and finds 
 but thirteen references to nautical in- 
 struments in inventories and wills. 
 Sometimes they are listed as "marri- 
 ners instruments" and in one case a 
 quadrant is valued at £1. Robert Gray 
 of Salem, who died in 1661, possessed 
 a "quadrant, a fore-staflfe (cross-staff), 
 a gunter's scale, and a pair of Com- 
 passes." John Bradstreet, who died 
 at Marblehead the previous year, 
 owned "3 small sea books" valued at 
 £1. 6s. The inventory of the estate of 
 Jonathan Browne of Salem, who died 
 in 1667, discloses a "fore-staff," and 
 that of the estate of John Silsby of 
 Salem, taken in 1676, lists "marriners 
 instruments and callender, 14s." 
 
 In a very detailed inventory made 
 in Salem before a notary publick on 
 Nov. 4, 1702, of the equipment of the 
 ship Province Galley, 90 tons, owned 
 by Roger Derby, the only instruments 
 for navigation that appear are "Two 
 Compasses, two ha [If] ho[ur] glasses, 
 a ha [If] Watchglass, a ha [If] minute 
 glass ... a hand lead line, a deep 
 sea lead line." 
 
 The Boston News-Letter, July 16, 
 1716, has the following advertisement: 
 "A Parcel of Mathematical Instru- 
 ments, viz: Quadrants, Meridian Com- 
 passes, all sorts of Rules, black lead 
 Pencils, and brass Ring Dials, etc. To 
 be sold by Publick Vendue at the 
 Crown Coffee House in King's Street, 
 Boston, on Thursday next." The same 
 issue has the advertisement of "Wil- 
 liam Walker in Merchants Row, near 
 the Swing Bridge," who had quadrants 
 for sale. 
 
 In looking back and noting the slow 
 process of perfecting all nautical in- 
 struments, the wonder is how the old 
 ships were navigated through distant 
 
 seas without greater loss of life and 
 vessels. The dangers were real during 
 our commercial-marine activities fol- 
 lowing the period of the Revolution 
 and the early nineteenth century, as 
 attested by reference to old news- 
 papers and letters, and to such records 
 as the Diary of Rev. William Bentley 
 of Salem, where nearly every Sunday 
 some of his parishioners asked for 
 prayers for friends at sea or for the 
 loss of husband, son or brother. The 
 shipmasters of Salem, Boston, Provi- 
 dence, New York and Baltimore, un- 
 dertaking distant voyages, had few 
 good charts — none for the new regions 
 they visited — they had no chronome- 
 ters, few had sextants, and their com- 
 passes were frequently unreliable. And 
 yet these men — most of them were 
 scarcely past their majority in years — 
 with the courage and enthusiasm of 
 youth, in ships filled with valuable 
 cargoes, entrusted to their care by 
 wealthy owners, sailed into uncharted 
 seas, visited unknown lands, and, all 
 the while rarely reported, finally came 
 safely back, to their everlasting credit 
 and the enrichment of the country. 
 
 We do not know exactly what in- 
 struments the old shipmasters carried 
 with them on these voyages, but we do 
 know that they were comparatively 
 few and very Inferior to those in use 
 today. An idea of the paucity in some 
 instances may be obtained from the 
 story of the ship Hannah, condemned 
 at Christiansand in 1810, in the pro- 
 test of American shipmasters which is 
 now preserved in the New Haven His- 
 torical Society collections. It reads: 
 "We, tlie undersigned masters of 
 American vessels now in the port of 
 Christiansand, having heard with as- 
 tonishment that one of the principal 
 charges against the American brig 
 Hannah, from Boston, bound direct to 
 Riga, and condemned at the prize 
 court at this place, is as follows, — that 
 the said court have pronounced it ab- 
 solutely impossible to cross the Atlan- 
 
 12
 
 tic without a chart or sextant. We 
 therefore feel fully authorized to assert 
 that we have frequently made voyages 
 from America without the above ar- 
 ticles, and we are fully persuaded that 
 every seaman with common nautical 
 knowledge can do the same." 
 
 No doubt many valuable data lie 
 hidden in old log-books and sea jour- 
 nals, early newspaper files, shipping 
 records of old business houses and 
 elsewhere. To anyone with time and 
 the inclination for research a fascinat- 
 ing field is open where material of 
 historical and scientific value may be 
 found. The writer is not aware that 
 any such investigations have been 
 made or accounts of any published. 
 
 Accurate knowledge of the instru- 
 ments carried by Colonial shipmasters 
 on their voyages to the West Indies or 
 along our coast and across the Atlantic 
 would be of much interest, and still 
 more to know what were supplied by 
 
 owners or carried as their personal 
 property by masters and supercargoes 
 for the longer voyages to Russia, the 
 Mediterranean, Africa, India, China, 
 and the South Seas. It would be in- 
 teresting to know, besides this, what 
 had been their experiences with them: 
 the accuracy of observations, how the 
 compass behaved, etc. The early nine- 
 teenth century shipmasters were close 
 observers, and in his works on naviga- 
 tion Lieut. M. F. Maury pays them 
 high compliment for the valuable as- 
 sistance- rendered in furnishing notes 
 and observations on currents, shoals, 
 coast lines, compass variations and 
 winds, for the charts and sailing direc- 
 tions which he compiled. 
 
 With these things in mind this paper 
 has been prepared, hoping that some- 
 one may be encouraged to take up the 
 work systematically. It is a subject 
 which seems to have been neglected, 
 and the results certainly will repay 
 much time devoted to its investigation. 
 
 SCHOONER BALTICK, CAPT. EDWARD ALLEN 
 Coining out of St. Eustatia, Nov. 16, 176S 
 
 13
 
 UCSB LIBRARY
 
 D 000 284 675