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Time to dust of the Nories?

10K views 30 replies 24 participants last post by  8575 
#1 · (Edited)
#3 ·
Paperless Ships

It had to come. Aeroplanes don't carry charts or sextants or Nories/Burtons and they seem to be able to find their way about.
It's just natural resistance. Remember the day when you first pulled out your Aircraft Navigation Tables for the first time on the bridge of a merchantman?
Didn't the 'old man' go off his brain .... "This is a ship, laddie, not an aeroplane! Get those things out of my sight and get out your PROPER tables and work the sight out properly."
I remember coasting Glenogle as a Middy. We had a Decca 606 True Motion radar and nobody on the bridge had ever seen one before. I'd just come off the Liverpool radar course (for 2nd Mates) with the same set. I got stuck on it from the time of departure to arrival next port at 23 knots in dense fog ('Speed' Carney was Master) but every time the 'old man' came for a look I had to turn it back to relative display for him :) After a week of criss-crossing the Channel he had the hang of it and I couldn't get near the set.
I would welcome all these changes if I were still at sea. Navigators of today regard Marc St.Hilaire as we used to regard Lunar Distances ..... just for interest.
 
#10 · (Edited)
It had to come. Aeroplanes don't carry charts or sextants or Nories/Burtons and they seem to be able to find their way about.
It's just natural resistance. Remember the day when you first pulled out your Aircraft Navigation Tables for the first time on the bridge of a merchantman?
Didn't the 'old man' go off his brain .... "This is a ship, laddie, not an aeroplane! Get those things out of my sight and get out your PROPER tables and work the sight out properly."
I remember coasting Glenogle as a Middy. We had a Decca 606 True Motion radar and nobody on the bridge had ever seen one before. I'd just come off the Liverpool radar course (for 2nd Mates) with the same set. I got stuck on it from the time of departure to arrival next port at 23 knots in dense fog ('Speed' Carney was Master) but every time the 'old man' came for a look I had to turn it back to relative display for him :) After a week of criss-crossing the Channel he had the hang of it and I couldn't get near the set.
I would welcome all these changes if I were still at sea. Navigators of today regard Marc St.Hilaire as we used to regard Lunar Distances ..... just for interest.
May I make a confession? I've navigated many ships all over the place and have never heard of Marc St.Hilaire. He wasn't going in my day, was he? 1948-62?
 
#5 · (Edited)
Still have my old Nories and many other books I have collected on the "arcane" discipline of celestial navigation. Includes some interesting applications of differential calculus to working sights. M St Helair still takes some beating.
Does any one agree that taking sights was merely a confirmation that the original planned route was working. That is, sailing by DR from say Cape Wrath to Belle Isle, taking into account ships speed at full ahead, slip, set, leeway. Point is, when all is taken into account how far off would we have been without taking sights. I cannot recall making any major alterations even after many days without sights.
 
#6 ·
Petexx , Have you suggested that WRT Royal Majesty? I admit that the fixes she missed were GPS and not (presumably) ham bone but DR for a relatively short period put her well aground. Perhaps even a couple of console bearings would have been better than just DR.

David V
 
#16 ·
Peter,

Ah, Consol (spelling corrected by Ron Stringer)!

More like before our time than after it! Although still in then in the Admiralty list of RS - don't know when it faded completely.

I have found a good description on http://jproc.ca/hyperbolic/consol.html

An antique system whereby one could tell the ships bearing (referenced from 'beacon') by counting to when the dots turned to dashes. An interference technique with no special receiver/processor required onboard. I thought that I had used this without special charts but in reviewing the site I see special charts were involved.

There used to be a good simulation of this in the Kensington science museum using two lamps. One flashing and the other steady surrounded by a rotating shutter. Not used seriously in my day (I only remember DF being used in anger as a double check for finding SW pass into Mississippi, that was 1972)

David V
 
#22 ·
Peter,

I thought that I had used this without special charts but in reviewing the site I see special charts were involved.

David V
I'm quite sure that we used to get bearings of Ploneis consol station without the use of charts. Crossed with d.f. bearings of Bishop's Rock it used to give us some idea of where we were when making the land after crossing the Bay of Biscay under 8/8 cloud cover. Can't remember how we did it.
Cheers, John
 
#24 ·
I once had a Nories dated 1888, I think, and it included a complete treatise on navigation. Sight reduction was by Admiral Sumner's New Method. This was quite a long calculation. Marc St. Hilaire later spotted that it could be much shortened and still give the same result.
 
#26 · (Edited)
I remember using 'Consol', crouched in a quiet corner counting and listening for the moment when the dots changed to dashes but it was never as simple as that as they tended to merge. This meant you had to write down your count, add them together subtract the resulting count from 60 then halve the difference and add that to each count. Not very accurate, and you generally nodded off whilst listening. Just as you are probably
nodding off reading my post.
 
#27 ·
#28 ·
Used the Consol system on one trip across the Atlantic in 1959. The 2nd mate found it very useful in fact he had suggested I try for it. From memory, no special charts. Also used the DF frequently during 1958-60 on British ships. Usually with very good results which checked out with the eventual visual bearings. It, the DF, was very useful during a season of runningup the St Lawrence, Sydney to Montreal with all the fog present in that neck of the woods. Again always tied in with our eventual visual bearings.
Cheers Bob
 
#30 ·
When I was on Cable Venture in 1979 there was another 3/o who had come back to sea after a few years ashore as a computer programmer. There was almost no normal navigation on the cable ship - all by early satnav and radar. he was so bored he reprogrammed the satnav to produce charts for everyone's "biorythms"!
 
#31 ·
I recall trying all sorts of permutations to get a 'fix', well a fix of a sort. Consol crossed with DF or sun sight position line. In other situations crossing a visual bearing of a distant island eg Mauritius with a sun sight position line. DF bearing with sun sight position line.

I don't know about other companies but the crowd I worked for were happy for us to buy US Charts of the US Gulf. This was handier than one might suppose because all the fixed production platforms were charted and the patterns they made could be identified on radar and thus positions obtained. As I recall the UK charts only charted the safety fairways. I did sail with one master who was highly sceptical of the US chart idea and made the deck officers take a series of sights to check against the US charts and the platform positions; needless to say the intercepts were miniscule!

Also recall when 2nd mate 1974ish, departing from Rotterdam and heading down channel to Land's End without seeing land or sky until we cleared Land's End! Achieved by doubling up watches and using DF the whole way - in the days when the DF stations were grouped and the good old Marconi gear could be set to auto. Radar performance was useless and intermittent. Seem to recall every time we heard the sound of an engine out in the fog we stopped or went to dead slow. Happy days. After Land's End it was back to sun sights and stars with air nav reduction tables
 
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