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Hydrographic Surveys by Officers of the Navy under the later Stuarts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

G. P. B. Naish
G. P. B. Naish
Affiliation:
(National Maritime Museum)
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Extract

We are told by Captain Greenvile Collins that Charles II was ‘A great lover of the noble art of navigation’. I think his brother, James, Duke of York, who became the Lord High Admiral at the happy Restoration in 1660, shared the same enthusiasm. Members of the Royal Society, including distinguished seamen, studied mathematics, mechanics and optics. The time was ripe for improvements to be tried out, under royal patronage, in ship design and construction as well as in the navigation of ships. English methods began to be regarded as not only the best but even as unnecessarily exacting, and we are told that Davis's backstaff was known as the English Quadrant by the French, and the English log and log-line for estimating a ship's speed through the water was better than the simpler methods popular with Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch mariners.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 1956 , pp. 47 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1956

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References

REFERENCES

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