Thread: A nautical story

Originally Posted by NavyDiver

I think I am repeating a yarn. As Anzac day is approaching I will give my self a leave pass today.

On HMAS Vampire, Mutiple mishipmen took sexants to mark our possitions every sun rise and sun set. The running joke was were and what we could be eating given thier sightings. I think Malasian was a possiblity while off JB Bob Jervis Bay for you non Naval types

Reminds me of an old cartoon, showing the navigator in a small yacht poring over a chart table, littered with charts, books of table, sextant, dividers etc, and with the rest of the crew looking over his shoulder.

He says "Take off your hats - according to my calculations, we are in Westminster Abbey!"

More seriously, the prize for "a method of determining longitude at sea" offered by the 1714 Longitude Act, eventually won by John Harrison for his invention of the chronometer, is generally thought to have been prompted by the Scilly Naval Disaster in 1707, when the RN lost four ships and around 2,000 lives, including the navy's C-i-C Admiral Shovell. Two other ships struck rocks, but were able to be saved. The ensuing investigation found the logged positions of surviving ships, sailing in company, differed by well over a degree, in both Latitude and Longitude. When they hit the Scilly Isles, the navigators thought they were off Ushant, and well clear of land.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Reminds me of an old cartoon, showing the navigator in a small yacht poring over a chart table, littered with charts, books of table, sextant, dividers etc, and with the rest of the crew looking over his shoulder.

He says "Take off your hats - according to my calculations, we are in Westminster Abbey!"

More seriously, the prize for "a method of determining longitude at sea" offered by the 1714 Longitude Act, eventually won by John Harrison for his invention of the chronometer, is generally thought to have been prompted by the Scilly Naval Disaster in 1707, when the RN lost four ships and around 2,000 lives, including the navy's C-i-C Admiral Shovell. Two other ships struck rocks, but were able to be saved. The ensuing investigation found the logged positions of surviving ships, sailing in company, differed by well over a degree, in both Latitude and Longitude. When they hit the Scilly Isles, the navigators thought they were off Ushant, and well clear of land.

Bad navigation is bad navigation. Harrison's story is one for the ages.[ From the book " Longitude " by DAVA SOBEL.] With no formal education or apprenticeship to any watchmaker, he constructed a series of virtually friction free clocks requiring no lubrication or cleaning, impervious to rust, that kept their moving parts perfectly balanced in relation to one another , regardless of how the world pitched and tossed about them. He did away with the pendulum, and combined metals in such a way that when one expanded or contracted with changes of temperature , the other counteracted the change and kept the clock's rate constant. His every success was parried by members of the scientific elite. So much so that the commissioners charged with awarding the longitude prize changed the contest rules when they saw fit, so as to favour the chances of astronomers over the likes of Harrison and his fellow " mechanics ".

The prize was equal to a Kings ransom, several million dollars in today's money. The search for a solution to the longitude problem assumed legendary proportions, on a par with discovering the fountain of youth, the secret of perpetual motion, or the formula for transforming lead into gold. The governments of the great maritime nations including Spain, the Netherlands and certain city-states of Italy offered jackpot purses for a workable method. The British government in its famed Longitude Act of 1714, set the highest bounty of all, a Kings ransom. Harrison struggled for 40 years, when after years of political intrigue , international warfare, academic backbiting , scientific revolution, and economic upheaval, and under the wing of King George 111, he received his full monetary award. The story of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell , and the lost English fleet, deserves a stand alone post.

Righto,...... being a bushman , and field engineer, I understand some of what you men are saying . Now my question ,( and no I have not consulted google , or Nate ,).....

why the deviation in the state boundary of S.A. at the Murray River ,at the intersection of N.S.W. and Vic. .?

Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell and the lost English fleet.

Returning home victorious from Gibralter after skirmishes with the French mediterranean forces , Sir Clowdisley could not beat the heavy autumn overcast.Fearing the ships might flounder on coastal rocks, the Admiral summoned all his Navigators to put their heads together. the consensus opinilon placed the Englkish fleet safely west of Ile d'Ouessant, an island outpost of the Brittany peninsula. But as they continued north, they discovered to their horror that they had misgauged their longitude near the Scilly isles. These tiny islands about 20 miles from the SW tip of England point to Lands End like a path of stepping stones, and on that foggy night of October 22, 1707, the Scillies became unmarked tombstones for two thousand of Clowdisley's troops.

The flagship, the Association, struck first . She sank within minutes, with all hands. Two more ships, the Eagle and the Romney, hit the rocks and went down. Four of the five warships were lost. Only two men washed ashore alive. Clowdisley and one other. Now comes the WTF moment.
In the previous 24 hours Clowdisley was approached by a sailor, a member of Associations crew , who claimed to have kept his own reckoning of the fleets location. Such subversive navigation by an inferior was forbidden in the RN, as the unnamed seaman knew. However the danger appeared so enormous, by his calculations, he risked his neck to make his concerns known to the Officers. Admiral Shovell had the man hanged for mutiny on the spot.!! And the Admiral? laying on the beach, exhausted from his long swim, he was murdered by a local woman who fell in love with the emerald ring on his finger. She confessed to her clergyman on her deathbed, producing the ring as evidence. Stranger than fiction

Originally Posted by Hogarthde

Righto,...... being a bushman , and field engineer, I understand some of what you men are saying . Now my question ,( and no I have not consulted google , or Nate ,).....

why the deviation in the state boundary of S.A. at the Murray River ,at the intersection of N.S.W. and Vic. .?

Now, I had to consult google, but here it is.

Border dispute answers erased in time - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Originally Posted by Aaron IIA

While I technically agree with you, does it mean that we should have had the big millennium party on 2000-2001, instead of 1999-2000?

Aaron

I solved that problem the Australian way... "you dont know if you need to have the party in 2000 or 2001? do both"

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

I solved that problem the Australian way... "you dont know if you need to have the party in 2000 or 2001? do both"

Still in Melbourne?

Originally Posted by bob10

Still in Melbourne?

near enough