“A Noise Annoys” Again
(See page 903, July, 1934, Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander Preston S. Lincoln, U. S. Naval Reserve.—The Writer has recently completed some volunteer training duty aboard a new heavy cruiser, and has come home with “a bone in his teeth” to wit: Why are naval ships afflicted with such noisy blowers, fans, and pumps?
Granting that ships, being made of are more resonant than hotels and office buildings, which are made of stone and wood, it still seems as if the noisiness of pumps and ventilating machinery could be substantially abated if as much attention were paid to this subject as has been given to elimination of noise in autos and the saving of weight aboard ship. Many office managers ashore recognize the fatigue-producing effect of noise, and some office managers go to the length of installing noiseless fans and silent typewriters to abate it.
Compare naval ships for noise with the best hotels and office buildings, or with the crack transatlantic and intercoastal passenger ships, and note the difference. No hotel or office building manager who was worth his pay would long tolerate noisy pumps or ventilating machinery, for if he did, his best patrons or tenants would soon seek quieter accommodations. Naval personnel, however, have to work and live under conditions reminiscent of the boiler factory, apparently because the noisiness of the machinery installation was ignored by those who design and draw the specifications for ships in which they do not have to live and work.
In the writer’s admittedly limited experience, battleships are the worst offenders as regards flushing pumps, while our newest heavy cruisers “take the bally bun” for noisy blowers and fans. On his last duty aboard a battleship (in 1935) the writer was quartered in a room close to the officers’ head, and both his rest and his studies were “punctuated” by the intermittent thumps, wheezes, groans, and wails of the head flushing pump, which were audible through the whole forward wardroom country, and had no rhythm to which one could semi-condition himself.
The new heavy cruiser’s flushing pumps were comparatively quiet while the writer was aboard, possibly because the ship was in dry dock; but the fans in the staterooms and offices more than made up for this, while when the blower under the wardroom deck was in full blast, it not only roared like a sirocco but actually shook the deck like a “tremblor.” There were even times when the writer was aboard when it was a question whether the office fans were not more annoying by their noisiness than the pneumatic riveters that beat a tattoo on the deck overhead; and when anything happened to stop the fans and blowers, the ensuing silence was so profound and grateful as to be startling, though a signal of trouble to the chief engineer.
If this noisiness were a case of “what can’t be cured must be endured,” the writer would have no excuse for these comments; but since it is possible to mount pumps and blowers and connect them to their piping or trunks so that the noise they make is not transmitted to their foundations and connections; and since auto, aircraft, and power-boat builders all try to minimize noise and vibration for the comfort of passengers and operating personnel, it seems as if naval personnel were entitled to at least as much consideration. Furthermore, when a fan is noisy, it indicates unbalanced or poorly designed blades, or loose bearings, and wasted power, even if the waste is small per ventilating fan.
The human system is tough, and junior officers and enlisted personnel most exposed to the fatigue-producing effects of noisy machinery, being mostly young, are resilient; but any nerve specialist will say that noise, especially if non-rhythmical, has a distinctly unfavorable effect upon the human nervous system and causes fatigue.
If the Bureaus of Medicine and Surgery and Construction and Repair have not yet studied Lieutenant Dennison’s article, “A Noise Annoys,” it would be worth their while to do so, and to have stipulated in all contracts for pumps and ventilating equipment that they be so mounted and connected to piping, trunks, etc., as to be noiseless in operation.
The writer has such limited opportunities for duty aboard ship that he can endure noise while there, and has no personal ax to grind in these remarks; but regular naval officers and men have to go where they are detailed and make the best of conditions as they find them, and the benefits to health and morale of quiet working and living quarters would well repay whatever extra care and expense may be involved in abating the noisiness of pumps and ventilating machinery.
Marking of Enlisted Men
(See page 1689, December, 1936, Proceedings)
Commander E. R. Henning, U. S. Navy.—Lieutenant (J.G.) R. O. Lucier’s article reminds me of that somewhat overworked but no less apt saying about the weather, originated I believe by Mark Twain. I agree with everything the author says with, however, one exception. I don’t agree that the present system of marking enlisted men for quarterly marks is adequate and satisfactory. Quite the contrary. The proof of any system is whether it works. It simply begs the question to imply that if human nature were different, it would work.
The marking of midshipmen is sound and fair because it is largely divorced from the personal equation. It is based on daily marks on recitations and weekly, monthly, and quarterly marks in practical work and examinations. The basis is that of mathematical record.
The marking of enlisted men, on the other hand, while ostensibly based on the same scale, is in reality something quite different. It is based on personal factors of which the actual merit of the men marked is not the most important. Long custom, the path of least resistance, and the natural reluctance to handicap one’s own men in their future chances of promotion result in marks so high and over so narrow a scale that they are losing all significance.
This will not be changed by any degree of official exhortation. Improvement will only come with a system that compels marking officers to spread their marks over a range equivalent to the wide range in which abilities and merit of individuals really vary.
It might be done in several ways. One, to have the Department set an arbitrary figure, perhaps 3.0, which the marks for each class of petty officer and non-rated men must average. Another way, to require that the mark for the lowest man in each group be 2.0, and the highest 4.0; the others spread between. A third way, that of establishing, say six, categories of proficiency and require that each classification be equally distributed from one to six.
For example: In a ship with 12 chief petty officers, under the heading “Ability as leader of men,” the two chief petty officers, who a conference of marking officers agrees are the best leaders, would be given a grade of 1, the next two 2, and so on.
It will have to be borne in mind that the above systems would not be intended to show absolute merit. They would indicate simply the worth of a man relative to the others of his rating classification in the unit in which he is serving. True, for any one quarter a quite acceptable man, particularly in a small and good crew, might fie found with a low standing. But as he was graded quarter after quarter, by different officers and in perhaps different ships, his average of grades would be bound to indicate very definitely his ability and Worth.
Such a system would be fair, would give real significance to quarterly marks in the selection of men for promotion, and would provide an incentive for best performance of duty, lacking in the (so often) gratuitous 3.9 and 4.0.
The Navy and the Press during the Civil War
(See page 33, January, 1937, Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander T. W. Sheridan U. S. Naval Reserve.—Professor west, in his interesting and valuable article, relates the story of the unpleasant relations at existed between Gustavus Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and B. S. Osbon, a truly illustrious American marine personality, whose name seems to have been lost in the tides of time. When I was a cadet in the New York Nautical School, in the school-ship St. Mary’s, I knew him well and after graduation visited him for many a “gam.” The row between these two men, Fox and Osbon, was one of the many similar fights between good, patriotic men that did much to paralyze the thought and action of the Federal forces in the early part of the Civil War.
Osbon had an extraordinary career which should be of more than passing interest to members of the Naval Institute. He started to sea in “deep water” square- riggers in 1840 when he was 13 years old, served in China and other distant seas, in sailing clippers, and in arctic whaling craft. He rose to command rapidly in the merchant marine and also served in an international Coast Guard on the China coast, where his dynamic, aggressive nature roused jealous antagonism among the international group of captains who commanded other pirate fighting forces, when Osbon wiped out nests of pirates and ruthlessly wrecked their ships. After leaving the China service, Osbon went whaling, arctic exploring, and back into the merchant marine, finally ending up in the Argentine where he became a commander in the revolutionary fleet under another American, Commodore Coe. With the remuneration received from the efforts to bring freedom to Argentina, he returned to America where he engaged in various commercial enterprises of an unprofitable nature and then launched out on a reporting, lecturing, and naval-writing career. Foreseeing the approach of strife between the states he aroused much dislike by his assertions concerning what should be done to prepare for war and in revealing the naval weakness and political ineptitude with which, on the Federal side, the opening acts of the sea drama of the war were staged. He always claimed, in conversation, that the enemies he made by his denunciations of political weaklings were the ones who worked Fox (an extraordinarily energetic, able, arrogant but vain man) up to the point where he took the ill-considered action against Osbon.
Osbon was acquitted of the charges lodged against him and, moreover, after national interest had been attracted to the case, with generals and admirals rushing to his defense, was presented with a purse of $5,000 by a group of prominent patriots to reimburse him for the financial loss suffered. While Osbon was one of the most successful men I ever knew in “the gentle art of making enemies,” he also had the valuable ability of making many admiring, loyal friends among the highest types of men.
Appreciative naval regard led to his being the only newspaper man with the fleet that passed the forts at New Orleans. Osbon’s renown as a pirate fighter and naval officer, along with a reputation as an authoritative writer on naval strategy and tactics, led Farragut to assign him to duty as a volunteer naval officer, in which duty he acted as secretary and signal officer to the Flag Officer. Among many other prior, naval literary activities, he had composed a manual of naval signaling.
Osbon was a rather religious man and could, as he said, “recite the Bible from truck to keel and stem to stern.” Knowledge of Osbon’s interest in exegesis, on the part of Farragut, led to an engaging incident. Near New Orleans under the plunging fire of Fort St. Philip, the Hartford, leading the fleet, ran aground and a Confederate ram courageously pushed a fire raft up alongside the apparently doomed flagship. As flame and smoke poured through the ship, Farragut looked down and to his surprise saw his signal officer kneeling in the scupper with a coat over his head and, remembering Osbon’s religious ideas, he shouted:
“This is not time for prayer!”
Osbon’s answer was that if the Flag Officer would wait a moment he would “see one of the quickest answers to prayer on record.” It was! Osbon rolled three shells (the caps of which he had removed under cover of the coat) overboard into the fire raft, which blew up and the ram fled in fright; the Hartford’s crew swiftly “sallied ship,” the fire was extinguished, and the flagship sailed on to one of the most important victories of the war.
Osbon was in many other enterprises and expeditions of the war and rendered much valuable, patriotic, unpaid-for service on every occasion. All of the naval officers whom I have heard discuss him did so with great regard. Not the least of his services was the one of interpreting and describing the vital value of the Navy to the nation. Had there been more men like him, the things that Professor West rightly deprecates would not have occurred.
During the latter part of the war, Osbon founded the first news-collecting agency in the United States and had many old faded letters of appreciation from high ranking officers for the work that he had carried on for adequate naval forces before and during the strife. I gathered from him that many naval officers did not like the domineering Gustavus Fox because, among other things, he had opposed granting any higher rank to naval officers than the curious one of “Flag Officer.”
After the Civil War was over, Osbon had an extraordinary career. He first went to Mexico, was appointed an admiral in the Mexican Navy and took part in the river operations against the French invaders which led to the elimination of Maximilian. Then he came back and served as quarantine officer in New Orleans.
Journalism, publishing, and many commercial activities occupied his time from the years of his Mexican operations to the Spanish War. He founded the well-known Nautical Gazette, which is still going strong, and sold out when things became too smooth.
Even in, and prior to, the war with Spain he was very active and rendered excellent service. Once, when I was in command of a liner running from Buenos Aires, I had as a passenger ex-Minister Loomis, of Venezuela, who was at one time temporary Secretary of State, and he told of the heroic deeds of violent anti-Spanish espionage and sabotage in neutral nations that Osbon performed.
When I first knew Osbon, in 1906, he was about 79 years old but vigorous mentally and physically, and was so for many years after. He could give an excellent demonstration of how to heave a harpoon into a whale or how they used single sticks m the real days when they “had iron men.”
Though not directly germane to this discussion, I think a little story which he told to illustrate his rather excessive devotion to that “first virtue of a seaman, orderliness” will be of interest. He often declaimed that “order was Heaven’s first law and that there should be a place for everything and everything in its place,” and to prove that this was his cardinal Professional principle told of the following:
When he was in the Chinese anti-pirate service, his most notable achievement was the capture of a craft that was the scourge of the Celestial Seas. All efforts to corner the cunning Chinese commander of the pirate craft had failed because it could sail faster off the wind than any of the pursuers and was of such light draft that could escape in shallow waters. Osbon’s dynamic determination and tenacity were finally rewarded when he found the rascal looting a captured Frenchman and after a swift, smart engagement, sank the junk and captured a number of prisoners. It was a great haul; the young commander’s heart sang with joy as he sailed in through the Sulphur Channel and he decided on a novel gesture to celebrate the occasion. Gantlines were rigged from each yardarm and the gurgling captives swung aloft to gurgle their last gasps to the roars of applause that greeted the triumphant Osbon’s return. There was one fly in the ointment: there were not enough pirates to go around and the lee main topsail yard was barren of any swinging ornament. That one bare spot in an otherwise perfect presentation irritated and pained Osbon excessively, and he was nervously pacing the quarter-deck when the First Lieutenant reported that the cook, in the culmination of a series of such culinary crimes, had burned the pea soup! This afforded a happy solution! Swiftly the fat, useless, and sullen scoundrel was rushed to the rigging, noosed by the neck, and swung aloft to fill the vacant space. Osbon said that he received general approbation for his original decorative scheme and also for the way in which he filled the vacant space. Osbon never showed any documentary proof of this anecdote and it may be that he just told it for the moral effect in inculcating a spirit of order and symmetry.
There were many manuscripts and records to show that Osbon was an important man of his time, and the lack of realization (on the part of Fox and others who followed him) of the necessity of proper publicity goes to explain why national interest in the Navy after the Civil War was so slight that in little more than a decade America sank from having the finest fighting force afloat to a position where effective protest could not be made against the ruthless murder of Americans by officials of a third-rate naval nation. Osbon, in public and private, always fought for an adequate navy and merchant marine even though he suffered for it during the Civil War. While Osbon was by no means lacking in a well-developed sense of enlightened self-interest, yet in his whole life, as I knew it, he never failed to put patriotic principle before personal profit and I know he would have worked his heart out for the Navy had he been allowed.
You Can Own Your Own Home in the Navy
(See page 1255, September, 1936, Proceedings)
Lieutenant Colby G. Rucker, U. S. Navy.—I would like to agree with Lieutenant (J.G.) Burrows, but in dealing with practical matters it frequently becomes necessary to prick the balloon of illusion with the needle of reality. In discussing a proposal so close to the hearts of us all as the fancy of home-owning by naval officers, one is naturally reluctant to apply the acid test of practicability.
Fundamentally this plan, like nearly all schemes of a similar nature, is based on co-operation, or “log rolling.” In other words, you help me and I’ll help you. Cooperative effort works excellently in barn raising, harvest fields, local milk companies, and the like. As the plan grows in complexity it becomes necessary to consider that one barn may be larger than another, that harvest fields differ in size, and that all people do not use the same amount or kind of milk or cream. This discrepancy is usually settled in produce or labor. In other words, we must recognize that in human relations all men do not have the same needs, desires, tastes, minds, bodies, or ambitions. In a complex society these differences are very real and are usually settled in cash. As applied to the present problem, that of home-owning by naval officers, the project splits squarely on the rock of human nature, by the basic assumption that the house that Lieutenant Jack built will, as a matter of course, be desirable to all other naval officers. Or that all naval officers will live contentedly and happily for their entire naval career in quarters not of their own selection in order to save a fraction of their rental allowance. Were this the only assumption we might reluctantly concede the workability of this scheme. But there are others even more ambitious.
First we are asked to assume that the government has a moral responsibility to assure that officers get one hundred cents on each dollar spent for rental purposes. Yet there are a large number of officers who do not approve of a paternal attitude on the part of the government toward the Navy, the basic principle being whether a naval officer is to be paid for services rendered or whether he is to be paid on the “enough to live on” basis. A considerable body of officers feel that the present paternalistic pay and pension schedule (which by inference asks us to believe that a married officer of one grade is worth more than an unmarried officer of the next senior grade or that the gratitude of the government should be greater when an officer gives his life and leaves a wife and two children than when he leaves a wife only) is incompatible with the dignity of both the government which gives the pay and the officer who receives it. Thus we must concede that the moral responsibility of the government for the housing welfare of its officers is a highly debatable point within the Navy itself, not to mention the halls of Congress.
The second assumption on which this proposal is based is that there are to be found line and staff officers within the Navy of such recognized business ability in the real estate field that we as investors are willing to intrust to their judgment a combined investment of fifty million dollars, and further that the government is willing to assume the pay of these officers when detailed to a private activity.
The third assumption is that the government is willing to assign to private interests government buildings for no cash consideration, and that after they are so assigned that the officers concerned are willing to assume the upkeep, repair, and depreciation of these houses, all of which expenses are now borne by the government. Are we so naive that we do not realize that government quarters represent an investment on the part of the government and that it expects to be repaid for the money invested in quarters by the rental allowances of the officers occupying them?
The last assumption is that naval officers desire to enter the real estate field with its attendant risks. That these risks are very real is well known by anyone who owns property. The closing of a single naval station might easily throw 100 houses back on the hands of the housing authority, which then finds itself under the necessity of closing its houses with a great loss of revenue, or of disposing of its property in a bankrupt market. In any mutual organization we must accept the risks as well as the gains, and as when owning bank stock we must be prepared to meet the amount of our investment by 100 per cent.
Lieutenant Burrows’ whole article is based on the false premise that naval officers can be pigeonholed into standardized quarters, that they will occupy them happily and contentedly, that they will treat property which they do not own as if they owned it, that they are collectively willing to enter the real estate field with its attendant risks and obligations, and that naval officers, line and staff, are ex officio eminently capable of safely conducting a fifty million dollar real estate program covering half the world. We are asked to believe that human nature is collectively capable of all this and more, for We are to believe that Congress will gladly lend us fifty million dollars to play with, that the government will readily accept deeds on houses at their face value as security for a cash loan, that they will keep our books, do our banking, pay our executive employees, and will turn over to our personal credit several million dollars of publicly owned quarters at no profit to the government. I do not recall a single pay bill that did not have the feature that it was designed to ultimately save money for the government.
If human nature can do all this, if the Navy can make money by merely occupying quarters, then the days of Plato’s republic are at hand, Utopia is just around the corner, and the Army and Navy will be useless appendages by next year at the latest. This proposal would place the Navy in the same position as Mark Twain’s legendary village in which the inhabitants supported themselves by taking in each other’s washing!
The American Monitors
(See page 235, February, 1937, Proceedings)
Fletcher Pratt.—Lieutenant Osborn’s discussion of the American monitors was found by one reader extremely interesting but all too brief; except for the original name-ship of the class they seem to have been curiously neglected by history, and one would willingly learn more about them.
One thing in particular he might have mentioned—the famous fiasco of the shallow-draft monitors, which still remains as the most horrible example on record of civilian interference with naval administrative and constructive technique. No less than 20 of the 35 monitors built during the Civil War belonged to this shallow-draft class, the Chimo class, and not one of them was of the slightest military value or was ever put to any military use.
They were laid down in 1862 in response to the demand from various commanders for armored ships of shallow draft that would work in the Mississippi and its tributaries. The Cabinet seems to have originated the plan of building a large number of monitors for such service and asked John Ericsson to prepare designs for a new type with a draft of only 4 feet. Ericsson, then very busy with the big double-turret monitors mentioned by Lieutenant Osborn, seems to have gone into the question far enough to be satisfied that a heavily-armored vessel could not be built on such a draft, but prepared preliminary sketches and sent them along to the department with the notation that the least draft would have to be 6 feet.
Now mark where the non-professional hand comes in. The Cabinet (civilians) and Army chiefs, ignorant of naval matters, decided that they were going to have 4-foot draft monitors whether it could be done or not; appointed Chief Engineer Alan Stimers to work out designs for monitors of that draft from Ericsson’s sketches, and since the Navy Bureaus of Construction and Steam Engineering were unwilling to proceed with any such impossible project, set Stimers up in a separate office in New York to bring out this class of monitors. Rear Admiral Gregory, who was on duty in New York as general superintendent of construction work along the Atlantic coast, could not get Stimers even to submit his plans to the Department for approval. Stimers practically formed a separate Department of Construction and Steam Engineering, responsible not to the Navy but directly to the Cabinet.
This might have done no harm had Stimers been as good a naval constructor as he was an engineer; but he was not, and he seems to have made the further mistake of quarreling with Ericsson and being thus deprived of his advice. In addition the Cabinet imposed upon Stimers several factors calling for weights beyond the original Ericsson sketches, including a heavy ring around the base of the turret, a heavily armored pilot-house, and a set of ballast tanks to aid the monitors in getting loose when they ran aground, with a complex system of piping and pumping.
In addition Stimers made a serious mistake in calculating the weight of the timber for these craft. The total result was that when the Chimo, first of the class, was launched, she barely floated, lying in the river with her deck awash—and this before she had received stores or crew! The other 19 vessels of the class were already so far along that no essential alteration in design was possible, and the whole business was a frightful fiasco and waste of public money, especially since the building of the ships had been loudly announced in the newspapers, and a good deal was expected from them. Three later had their turrets taken out and were used in the James River with unprotected guns mounted on their decks; and an attempt was made to use 5 more as spar torpedo boats, also without turrets, but nothing much came of either experiment.
Incidentally Assistant Secretary Fox had the justice to recognize that Stimers was not fundamentally to blame, and does not appear to have punished him, unless appointing him as engineer of the Tunxis, one of the shallow-draft monitors, could be considered a punishment. I have seen a memoir which describes a friend of Stimers’ coming down the companion ladder of the Tunxis and finding the engineer busy with a cold chisel on the brass plate which stated the ship was “Designed under the direction of Chief Engineer Alan Stimers.”
An All Tangent + Secant Navigation Table
(See page 643, this issue.)
Lieutenant Arthur A. Ageton, U. S. Navy.—To those navigators who prefer the D. R. position to an assumed position for navigation, Captain Aquino’s presentation of another short method using the D. R. latitude and longitude will be of great interest. I have worked a number of problems with the formulas given in his article and I found them simple and easy to use. In two particulars, Captain Aquino’s exposition is difficult to follow.
At no place in the text of the article does he mention an auxiliary angle B, although he uses it in solution of his examples. Apparently B is the complement of C, which is the sum or difference of b and L. This change is made, I believe, in order to use the co-function of the cotangent of C, so that his table of tangents will be effective. An understanding of this basic factor will assist the reader in following Captain Aquino’s explanation of his method.
The form of the problem is rather difficult to follow. This is particularly true of Problems III and IV, where the step from C to B is not indicated at all. I am indicating below a rearrangement of Captain Aquino’s form, using his Problem I, which I believe would be somewhat easier for the reader to follow.
It is not exactly clear to me just what the author comtemplates when he speaks of combining b with the D. R. latitude “slightly modified to give C to the nearest minute of arc.” Apparently, this will require a slight change in the D. R. position for plotting. Similar slight change in longitude to give LHA to the nearest minute is apparently contemplated. Accepting Captain Aquino’s relaxation of the standard of accuracy to the nearest minute of altitude (or nearest nautical mile), I can see no reason to bother with adjustment of the latitude and longitude such as he describes. The maximum error there possible in plotting is the square root of 2, or 1.41 miles. With a table giving without interpolation a maximum error of 1 mile in altitude difference, replotting of the D. R. position for each sight would seem to be an unnecessary nuisance.
A further advantage of this method which Captain Aquino has not mentioned is the fact that the azimuth can be computed without the necessity of first computing or observing the altitude. Knowing LHA, d, and Lat., the azimuth can be computed by the tangent-secant formulas with only 5 entries in the table and a total of 8 logarithms, a feature of decided advantage to the navigator in observing the azimuth for compass correction.
One disadvantage is the use of tangents with their negative characteristics, which quite naturally complicates the arithmetic not inconsiderably. As is well known to practical navigators, the pressure for speed in navigation contributes many arithmetical mistakes. For this reason, any additional complication in arithmetic is sedulously to be avoided. However, since tangents are combined with secants which do not have negative characteristics, this is not a serious difficulty.
The method presented in Captain Aquino’s article is not exactly a new one, having been published in Brazil, I believe, some three years ago. However, the author here presents for the first time for North American consumption a method which is a definite contribution to the art and science of navigation by one already distinguished for his previous numerous and distinctive contributions.
What is Modern Navigation?
(See page 1750, December, 1936, Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander W. A. Mason, U. S. Navy.—In this article Captain H. F. Long inquires: “What is Modem Navigation?” He then proceeds to answer his own question by describing the navigational methods which were in vogue during the “horse and buggy days” of our grandfathers.
To the Captain’s inquiry it is suggested that he refer to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The fourteenth (1929) edition devotes several pages to the general subject of Navigation. Under the subheading “Modern Navigation” will be found a brief description of the methods of Astronomical (Celo) Navigation now in general use. The description given is that of the use of lines of position together with all the necessary adjuncts of the Marcq Saint-Hilaire method, i.e., calculated altitude, zenith distance, azimuth, intercept, running fixes, etc. Here also will be found the oft repeated statement found in all modern textbooks on Navigation:
The only information that is obtained from one observation of a heavenly body is that the ship is somewhere on the circumference of a small circle on the earth’s surface, the center of which is the geographical position of the body and the radius of which has the same arc-measure as the zenith distance at the instant of observation.
This is the only method described, no mention being made of the time sight or other methods or tables such as Johnson, Blackburne, Martelli, or other formulas and methods which have given way before the modern line of position methods with their necessary chart work.
The previous edition (thirteenth of 1926) also contains a rather lengthy discussion on the subject of “Modern Navigation.” On page 297 of this edition will be found the following statement:
The principle of the Sumner’s method has of recent years received a very important and valuable development under the name of the “New Navigation.”
Captain Long incorrectly attributes to the U. S. Navy the coining of the phrase “The New Navigation” as applied to the Marcq Saint-Hilaire method.
While it is not claimed that the Encyclopedia Britannica is the last word on the subject of modern navigation, a comparison of the information contained therein with any of the present-day textbooks on Navigation will find them in full agreement.
One is led to doubt the value of other unsubstantiated statements made in Captain Long’s article when we read that: “Blackburne’s tables are now in use by all navigators.”
The writer has questioned a large number of officers of the merchant service and the U. S. Navy on this subject and has been unable to locate anyone familiar with or who uses these tables. A prominent dealer in nautical charts and books located in a large west coast shipping port informs the writer that the Blackburne Tables (published in England) are no longer kept in stock because there is no demand for such obsolete books.