The Way It Was.

The Maasdam was at sea all of last night and all of today taking us from Prince Edward Island to Quebec on the Saint Laurent.  Lots of time for eating, dozing and reading but not much other than the ever-changing beauty of the sea to Blip.  This 19th century sextant, along with a chronometer is on display in one of the public areas.  It’s hard to imagine in this day of satellite navigation that without an extremely accurate and reliable chronometer and a sextant it was almost impossible to determine longitude accurately.  There is a wonderful little book called “Longitude” by Dava Sobel which describes the hard battle to develop a clock for use at sea which was impervious to anything that Nature could throw at it and would keep dead accurate time relative to the Greenwich Meridian