Excerpt from Treatise on Navigation, and Nautical Astronomy: Adapted to Practice, and to the Purposes of Elementary Instruction; With an Extensive Series of Examples for Exercise, and All the Tables Requisite for Nautical Computations
In the work of which a fifth is now offered to the public, it has been attempted to furnish, in a moderate compass, a mathematical course adapted at once to the instruction of youth destined for the sea-service - to the every-day wants of the practical mariner - and to the more extended views of those who aspire not only to an acquaintance with Navigation as an art, but to a knowledge of its principles as a branch of science. Few persons have been extensively employed in teaching Navigation who have not felt the want of some such book; a want which will now be more extensively felt than heretofore, from the establishment of boards in all the principal seaports for the examination of masters and mates in the theory and the practice of their profession.
To understand the principles of Navigation and the formulae for computation in Nautical Astronomy, considerable preparatory knowledge of the elementary branches of mathematical science is indispensable; and it is perhaps the leading characteristic of the following work, that, while it contains all the tables and rules for computation necessary for, the practical seaman, it contains also the investigations of the rules, and the preparatory mathematical information necessary for understanding the investigations.
The introductory article on the principles of Algebra will enable the student to read, without difficulty, the analytical investigations in Plane and Spherical Trigonometry; and while the treatises on the other elementary branches of science will be found sufficient to serve the purpose for which they are chiefly intended, it is hoped that they may also tend to produce that taste for demonstrative science which is one of the most valuable effects of mathematical instruction.
The most useful trigonometrical formulae are written out in words, in the form of practical rules; and the whole of the work has been so arranged, that the theoretical and the practical parts may be taught either separately or jointly.
The principles of Navigation are explained at considerable length, and their application shown in the solution of a variety of problems, in plane, parallel, middle latitude, and Mercator's sailing, in keeping a sea-journal, and the construction of charts.
The employment of steam in long voyages having given to Great Circle Sailing an importance which it did not previously possess, a short article on the subject is given in this edition.
An investigation is given of the principles of the quadrant and other reflecting instruments for nautical observations, accompanied with instructions for adjusting them.
The practical rules for the solution of the most useful problems in Nautical Astronomy will, it is hoped, be found simple and unambiguous. The method of finding the latitude from double altitudes will, the author trusts, contribute to bring that problem into general use among practical seamen.
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