"Sextant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A sextant and astrolabe were brought him from France, of whose use no one could inform him, though he asked all whom he met. At length a Dutch merchant, Franz Timmermann by name, was brought him, who measured with the instrument the distance to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... your cabin and study your navigation, sir. Your ignorance of the simplest matters is fearful. At your age you ought to be as well able to use a sextant as I am." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... kept a regular journal, and travelled, I thought, more like a geographer than a fur-trader. He was provided with a sextant, chronometer and barometer, and during a week's sojourn which he made at our place, had an opportunity to make several astronomical observations. He recognised the two Indians who had brought the letter addressed to Mr. J. Stuart, and told us that they were two women, one of whom had dressed ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... May, there to receive our final orders and start for England. It would be tedious, and it is not necessary, to give a description of the survey which we afterwards made. We went over the same ground as before, and we surveyed with a musket in one hand and a sextant in the other, for the natives were not to be trusted. Our warlike friends at Tampassook did not much relish our re-appearance on their coast. A Spanish slave made his escape from them and came on board, begging a passage to any where. He had been taken prisoner, with six or seven others, in ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... terrors of the supernatural, and to deter the explorer of the great ocean. The half-decked vessels that crept along the Mediterranean shores were but ill-fitted to bear the brunt of the furious waves of the Atlantic. The now indispensable sextant was but clumsily anticipated by the newly invented astrolabe. The use of the compass had scarcely become familiar to navigators, who indeed but imperfectly understood its properties. And who could tell, it was objected, that a ship which might succeed ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... busy with the problem of accurate chronometers, however, another instrument for taking longitude at sea had been invented. This was the reflecting quadrant, or sextant, as the improved instrument is now called, invented by John Hadley in 1731, and independently by Thomas Godfrey, a poor glazier of Philadelphia, in 1730. Godfrey's invention, which was constructed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... a strange little cutter of five tons, as remarkable for the number of people on board it as mine was for having so few. There was the grey-haired hearty papa, and when we had noticed him taking observations with a sextant, we knew he was "a character." Then there was his active son, and a younger brother, and a sister in bright red, and a sailor boy. They looked even more numerous, because they kept for ever moving out of sight, and then appearing in new costume, under and ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... longer see the sea beneath them, owing to the darkness and fog which lay between, John had to rely entirely upon intuition and his compass to strike Freetown. Aerial navigation over immense bodies of water is similar to navigation on the seas themselves, except that the indispensable sextant of the mariner is of little use in the air, owing to the high speed of travel and the fact that allowances have to be made for the drift of the machine when side-winds are blowing—an extremely difficult factor ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... had an awful shock to my nervous system. A sergeant has been up and served us out with the first Yeomanry comforts we have ever seen, much less had. Each of us has received a 1/4-lb. tin of Sextant Navy Cut tobacco. For the present, I cannot write more, I ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... and I stepped inside, gazing about in surprise. It was nearly twice the size of my own apartment, containing a wide single berth, several comfortable upholstered chairs, and a large desk, on which stood a sextant, besides several charts, one unrolled. To my left, close against the side of the vessel was a narrow door standing ajar, and through the opening I caught sight ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... a balloon with a compass and sextant I should say we were lost. And if Indians ever lived and died hereabouts they certainly left so signs of ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... her as "the great ship" and yet her hull was not quite one hundred feet long. Safely Captain Jonathan Ingersoll took her out over the long road, his navigating equipment consisting of a few erroneous maps and charts, a sextant, and Guthrie's Geographical Grammar. In Table Bay he sold his cargo of provisions and then visited the coast of Guinea to dispose of his rum for ivory and gold dust but brought not a single slave back, Mr. Derby having ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... dhows, in some of which, I believe, even at the present day, a few slaves are occasionally smuggled off to Persia and Arabia. It has always been a matter of great wonder to me how the navigators of little vessels find their way from port to port, as they do, without the aid of either compass or sextant, and how they manage to weather the terrible storms that at certain seasons of the year suddenly visit eastern seas. I remember once coming across a dhow becalmed in the middle of the Indian Ocean, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... get a chance to learn on the trip," answered Rainey. "I know the general principles, but I've never tried to use a sextant. I'm going to get the skipper to help ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... and after a fatiguing march of twelve miles, reached Bray, a watering place. Endeavoured to take the meridional altitude of the sun, by the back observation with Troughton's pocket sextant; and after carefully examining his rise and fall, with the intervals betwixt each observation, I was convinced that it can be done with great accuracy, requiring only a steady hand and proper attention. This was a great relief to me; I had been plagued watching the passage ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... seemed to have talked without intermission for two hours; before them on the table lay barometer, chronometer, sextant, journal, and half the ship's library. This consisted of Kingo's hymn-book and an old Dutch 'Kaart-Boikje'; [Footnote: Chart-book.] for the skipper could do just as little with the new hymns as the steersman with ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... he has no private means of learning the names of such persons, I should recommend him to write to some public Professor, stating all particulars, and begging the favour of his advice. The use of the sextant may be learnt at various establishments in the City and East End of London, where the junior officers of merchant vessels receive instruction at small cost. A traveller could learn their addresses from the maker of his sextant. He might also apply at the rooms of the Royal ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... without scruple take it from me. Of this I was convinced from the way in which they pulled up all the vegetables in my garden and carried off everything of value which they found in the hut. Among other articles were my sextant, chronometer, and nautical almanacks, which I had brought in my chest from the Dolphin, though unable to use them on board the privateer till the day I spoke of. The chronometer I had carefully wound up every day, and it was still going when ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... SEXTANT, an instrument used in navigation (sometimes also in land-surveying) for measuring the altitudes of celestial bodies and their angular distances; consists of a graduated brass sector, the sixth part of a circle, and an arrangement of two small mirrors and telescope; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... water, and the carpenter to take his tool chest. Mr. Samuel got 150lbs of bread, with a small quantity of rum and wine. He also got a quadrant and compass into the boat; but was forbidden, on pain of death, to touch either map, ephemeris, book of astronomical observations, sextant, time-keeper, or any of my surveys ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh
... said Beechnut. "My father had no such clock, in point of fact. He put his money in a bag, his bag in his chest, and his chest in the hold, and it came as safe as the captain's sextant." ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... to extraordinary indulgence. On my visit to the ship, I could not help remarking the great economy of all its arrangements: no such thing, for instance, as a looking-glass was to be seen, except the one kept for measuring the angle of the sextant, and that, small as it was, assisted the whole crew in the operation ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... intelligent eye. On being shown the planisphere, he proved his knowledge of the planets and many of the constellations, by repeating their Arabic names. The telescope, which presented objects inverted,—the compass, by which he could always turn to the East when praying,—and the sextant, which he called 'the looking-glass of the sun,' excited peculiar interest. He inquired with evident jealousy, into some parts of English history; particularly the conquest of India ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... running in for the land. This was done to determine our longitude; for by the captain's chronometer we were in 25 W., but by his observations we were much farther, and he had been for some time in doubt whether it was his chronometer or his sextant which was out of order. This land-fall settled the matter, and the former instrument was condemned, and becoming still ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... coffee. One small tin canister, about fifteen inches square, was filled with spare shirts, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, another of the same size was stored with medicines, a third with books, and a fourth with a magic lantern, which we found of much service. The sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained the clothes we expected to wear out in the journey, which, with a small tent just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a horse rug as a bed, completed my equipment. An array of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... beamed from the summit by night. Far and wide over the stormy waters of the Mediterranean this meteor glowed, inviting and guiding the mariners in; and both its welcome and its guidance were doubly prized in those ancient days, when there was neither compass nor sextant on which they could rely. In the course of the contest with the Egyptians, Caesar took possession of the Pharos, and of the island on which it stood; and as the Pharos was then regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world, the fame of the exploit, though it ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... inexperience in observatory work or the making of astronomical observations. A coast survey observer had once let me look through his transit instrument and try to observe the passage of a star. On the eclipse expedition mentioned in the last chapter I had used a sextant. This was about all the experience in practical astronomy which I could claim. In fact I had never been inside of an observatory, except on two or three occasions at Cambridge as a visitor. The captain reassured me by saying that no great experience was ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... astonished when papa came on deck with the sextant in his hand, and "shot" the sun, as it is called; that is to say, he ascertained our exact latitude by observing through the instrument the height of the sun at noon. Placing it to his eye, he watched it until it ceased ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... provided with two carioles and two sledges, their drivers and dogs being furnished in equal proportions by the two Companies. Fifteen days' provision so completely filled the sledges that it was with difficulty we found room for a small sextant, one suit of clothes, and three changes of linen, together with our bedding. Notwithstanding we thus restricted ourselves and even loaded the carioles with part of the luggage instead of embarking in them ourselves we did not ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... said; "I shouldn't be surprised if we get a glimpse of the sun between the clouds, presently. Will you get my sextant and the chronometer up, Jack, ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... what you want for what you have given me; but when do we get what we want in exchange for what we give? Our trafficking is a clumsy barter. A man sells me a sheep, and I pay him in return with my grandfather's old sextant. This is not quite true for you and me. Love is given and love is returned. A Dieu—not adieu. Remember that the world is very big, and that there may be room in it for ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... themselves to keep their higher moral principles and their more rigid self-examination for the 'great' things, as they suppose, and let the little things often take care of themselves. What would you think of the captain of a steamer who in calm weather sailed by rule of thumb, only getting out his sextant when storms began to blow? And what about a man that lets the myriad trivialities that make up a day pass in and out of his heart as they will, and never arrests any of them at the gate with a 'How camest thou in hither?' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have sailed with men before the mast who had their master's certificates in their pockets,—English Board of Trade certificates, too,—who could work a double altitude if you would lend them a sextant and give them a look at the chronometer, as well as many a man who commands a big square-rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor seamanship, either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... measures the heaviness of the outside air and forecasts changes in the weather; the humidistat, which indicates the degree of dryness in the atmosphere; the storm glass, whose mixture decomposes to foretell the arrival of tempests; the compass, which steers my course; the sextant, which takes the sun's altitude and tells me my latitude; chronometers, which allow me to calculate my longitude; and finally, spyglasses for both day and night, enabling me to scrutinize every point of the horizon once the Nautilus has ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... had a revolver, a hunting knife, and some fishing tackle; one three and a quarter by four and a quarter folding pocket kodak, one panorama kodak, a sextant and artificial horizon, a barometer, a thermometer. I wore a short skirt over knickerbockers, a short sweater, and a belt to which were attached my cartridge pouch, revolver, and hunting knife. My hat was a rather narrow brimmed ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, angular elevation, angular distance, angular velocity; trigonometry, goniometry; altimetry^; clinometer, graphometer^, goniometer; theodolite; sextant, quadrant; dichotomy. triangle, trigon^, wedge; rectangle, square, lozenge, diamond; rhomb, rhombus; quadrangle, quadrilateral; parallelogram; quadrature; polygon, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, oxygon^, decagon. pyramid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... learned that a party of Indians have been camped near the place for several weeks. Our fears are soon allayed, for we find the cache undisturbed. Our chronometer wheels have not been taken for hair ornaments, our barometer tubes for beads, or the sextant thrown into the river as "bad medicine," as had been predicted. Taking up our cache, we pass down to the foot of the Uinta Mountains and in a cold storm go ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... a staff commander teaching a class how to use the sextant, which is the sailor's most useful instrument for finding his place at sea, from sun and stars; or he may be teaching them how to use a chart or ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... later they had stormed the bridge, where they two, of all the ship's company, were pretty sure of a welcome. They found the Captain standing, with his sextant at his eye, the four gold stripes on his sleeve gleaming gaily in the sunshine. Evidently things were going right, for the visitors and their daring proposal were ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... interesting part of the survey work was what is known to the surveyor as coast-lining. This meant walking along the edge of the sea ice, fixing one's position by sextant angle every five hundred yards or so, and sketching in a notebook the character and features of the ever changing coast between the various "fixes." One could keep warm doing this and one saw more of the land and ice formation than the others, for it meant following carefully round-cape and ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... that city, and a free passage to England obtained for us. Russen, however, getting in drink, made statements which brought suspicion upon us. I had imposed upon the Consul with a fictitious story of a wreck, but had stated that my name was Wilson, forgetting that the sextant which had been preserved in the boat had Captain Bates's name engraved upon it. These circumstances together caused sufficient doubts in the Consul's mind to cause him to give directions that, on our arrival in London, we were to be brought ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... collection of objects inviting prompt attention. Each moment he could see with greater distinctness. Kneeling on one side of the little pile he discerned that on a large stone, serving as a rude bench, were some tin utensils, some knives, a sextant, and a quantity of empty cartridge cases. Between the stone and what a miner terms the "face" of the rock was a four-foot space. Here, half imbedded in the sand which covered the floor, were two pickaxes, a shovel, a sledge-hammer, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... shouldered their rifles, while Dr. Cortlandt took a repeating shot-gun with No. 4 shot, and, having also some hunting-knives and a sextant, all three set out in a northwesterly direction. The ground was rather soft, and a warm vapor seemed to rise from it. To the east the sky was veiled by dense clouds of smoke from the towering volcanoes, while on their left the forest seemed to extend without ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the Doctor was becoming uneasy. He kept getting out his sextant (an instrument which tells you what part of the ocean you are in) and making calculations. He was forever looking at his maps and measuring distances on them. The far edge of the sea, all around us, he examined with his telescope a hundred times ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... last, and many circumstances indicate our approach to a climate differing considerably from that of the country through which we have been passing: the air of the open country is astonishingly dry and pure. Observing that the case of our sextant, though perfectly seasoned, shrank and the joints opened, we tried several experiments, by which it appeared that a tablespoon full of water exposed in a saucer to the air would evaporate in thirty-six hours, when the mercury did not stand ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... for my second expedition is at an end, and those of my readers who have followed my wanderings are perhaps as glad to arrive at the end as I was. I may truly say that for nearly twelve months I had been the well-wrought slave not only of the sextant, the compass, and the pen, but of the shovel, the axe, and the needle also. There had been a continual strain on brain and muscle. The leader of such an expedition as this could not stand by and simply give orders for certain work to be ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... enabled the Arabs to make considerable progress in astronomy. Observatories at Bagdad and Damascus were erected as early as the ninth century. Some of the astronomical instruments which they constructed, including the sextant and the gnomon, are still ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... stolen from the observatory: Cook at once demanded from the chiefs that it should be returned, but they paid no attention. The thief, however, was pointed out, seized, and taken on board ship; the sextant was recovered, but Cook says, finding the thief to be "a hardened scoundrel, I punished him with greater severity than I have ever done any one before, and then dismissed him." He is said to have had his head shaved and his ears cut off, but Gilbert (midshipman on the Discovery) ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... journey Sir George had his sextant, but, having to walk hungry and thirsty, he needed to walk light. Therefore he hid the sextant in a tree, where many a year later it was found, a rustic relic, by some settlers. Death raced him so hard that he eased the burden of keeping in front of it by tearing ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... he cried, his eyes sparkling from the effects of the brandy. "Plenty on my mind—plenty! But I can work out the latitude and the longitude, and I can handle my sextant and manage my logarithms. You couldn't prove me mad in a court of law, could you, now?" It was curious to hear the man lying back and coolly arguing out the question ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... our course has not been plotted. I sit down and do this now, for the purpose of finding where we are by dead reckoning. It is a clear night, and I take out the sextant to make observations for latitude, and find that the astronomic determination agrees very nearly with that of the plot—quite as closely as might be expected, from a meridian observation on a planet. In a direct line, we must be about ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... marbles or round shot, strewed about. A red ferruginous crust projected from the highest part, and, on this summit, the magnetic needle was greatly affected by local attraction, and quite useless. Fortunately, I had also my pocket sextant, and with it took some valuable angles. On descending, I heartily enjoyed a breakfast, and named the hill which gave us the water, Mount Aquarius. Returning towards Mount Owen, by a more direct route, I arrived ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... when the writer was crossing the Pacific Ocean in H.M.S. "Scout," Coggia's comet unexpectedly appeared, and (while Colonel Tupman got its positions with the sextant) he tried to use the prism out of a portable direct-vision spectroscope, without success until it was put in front of the object-glass of a binocular, when, to his great joy, the three band images ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... other plans; indeed the possible methods of optically superimposing two or more images are very numerous. Thus I have used a sextant (with its telescope attached); also strips of mirrors placed at different angles, their several reflections being simultaneously viewed through a telescope. I have also used a divided lens, like two stereoscopic ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... we do use a little glass in the business attached to the sextant. But you thought I ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... throttle lever and its companion spark began to move around the tiny sextant, approaching nearer and nearer. Simultaneously, sympathetic, as though actuated by the same power, the hand of the speedometer on the dash began to crawl up and up. They had been all but racing before; ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... to be a really splendid boat. We had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an 'Old Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went back to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... 22nd a man found means of carrying off a sextant from Mr Bayley's observatory. Omai fixed on the culprit, who was a Bolabola man, a hardened scoundrel. He confessed that he had taken the instrument, and would show where it was. This did not save him, however, from having his head and beard shaved, and both his ears cut off, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... found the evening sun suspended above vast masses of warm clouds and the sea quiet and peaceful. He began to take observations with the [v]sextant, which shook in his trembling hand. Presently a loud buzzing was heard in the sky, followed by the measured crackling of a machine gun; from the hull of the boat came a sharp rat-a-tat, as if some one was throwing dry peas on it. A hydroplane ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... mark the exact moment shown on the chronometer, while I mark the sun's elevation as shown on the index of the sextant." ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... hideous turmoil of human and elemental strife, the three air-ships floated for awhile in a serene and sunlit atmosphere. But this was only for a time. Arnold had taken the position and altitude of the Lucifer very carefully by means of his sextant and compass before he rose into the air, and as soon as his preparations were complete he made another observation of the angle of the sun's elevation, allowing, of course, for his own, and placed his three ships as nearly perpendicular as he could over the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... been the barometer, for I know he had them both," resumed the aunt. "Barometer, or thermometer, it do n't make any great difference; or quadrant, or sextant. They are all instruments, and sometimes he used one, and sometimes another. Sailors take on board the sun, too, and have an instrument for that, as well as one to weigh the weather with. Sometimes ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... to anything else. But I had frequently reason to regret that I was not better furnished with instruments, particularly Barometers, or a boiling water apparatus, to ascertain the elevation of the country and ranges we had to travel over. The only instruments which I carried, were a Sextant and Artificial Horizon, a Chronometer, a hand Kater's Compass, a small Thermometer, and Arrowsmith's Map of the Continent ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... medicine, and put his log and the ship's papers in it. He took up his chronometer to bring it, when a wave like that which got the cook and the boy knocked the skipper over and lost the chronometer. All he got away with was his sextant and compass and his watch, which was as good ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... captain's cabin, he returned with two or three charts, a sextant and the ship's chronometer, which he placed on the table just as a heavy footfall sounded on the companion steps. It ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... our old camp ground at Eight-Mile Spring and there spent the night. Prof. had forgotten his sextant and rode back to our main camp for it. We continued in the morning without him to a place farther east called Navajo Well, a deep spring in a sort of natural hole, somewhat aided by native hands, in the midst of some sloping, barren rocks, the last spot where one would look for water. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... sails, nine bright stars, four planets, and the sun have been selected. The nautical almanacs give the distance of the moon from these successive stars every hour in the night for three years in advance. The sailor can measure the distance at any time by his sextant. Looking from the world at D (Fig. 29), the distance of the moon and [Page 72] star is A E, which is given in the almanac. Looking from C, the distance is only B E, which enables even the uneducated sailor to find the distance, C D, on the earth, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... might collect during my journey. I had two sets of instruments for astronomical observation and for use in surveying (one of which had been furnished me by the Royal Geographical Society), such as the six-inch sextant, hypsometrical apparatus for measuring heights, with boiling-point thermometers specially constructed for very great altitudes; two aneroids, one to 20,000 feet, the other to 25,000 feet; three artificial horizons (one mercury, the others plate-glass with levels); a powerful telescope with ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... from Miss Sallie McLean would be how "Grandma Spicer gets Grandpa Ready for Sunday-school," from the "Cape Cod Folks;" but why not save space for what is not in everybody's mouth and memory? This is equally true of Mrs. Cleaveland's "No Sects in Heaven," which, like Arabella Wilson's "Sextant," goes the rounds of all the papers every other ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... rushed Mr. Kear, followed immediately by Falsten and Miss Herbey, who were bearing the inan- imate form of Mrs. Kear. Curtis ran to his cabin, instantly returning with a chart, a sextant, and a compass in ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... 7. Sextant and three points. The most rapid accurate method is to adopt three points visible all over the ground (as trees or chimneys) or set up three markers. Find shape and size of this triangle. Then at any point take two angles visible ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... of the first part, and J. C. Sumner, W. H. Dunn, and O. G. Howland, party of the second part, witnesseth, that the said party of the second part agree to do the following work, respectively, for the party of the first part, namely: J. C. Sumner agrees to do all necessary work required with the sextant; W. H. Dunn to make barometrical observations night and morning of each day, when required, also to make observations when needed for determining altitude of walls of the Canon, also to make not more than sixty-two hourly series of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... began to show its broad disk, dimly outlined in the white mists. The captain ran for his sextant; and an observation was caught, which, being worked up, gave our latitude at 45 deg. 35'. We had probably made in the neighborhood of thirty miles during the night: so that the boys on "The Catfish" had given a very shrewd guess, to say the least. In the afternoon we had a fair breeze ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... THE PERILS OF THE SEA. A female figure, standing, holds in her left hand a wreath of oak, and with her right is preparing to inscribe the name of the recipient on a monument which is surmounted by the American eagle, and to the right of which are a mast, a yard with its sail bent, an anchor, a sextant, and a branch of laurel. Exergue: ACT OF ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... shop-window near the river at Reading, my difficulties as to getting to any desired place in the world vanished once and for all: for a good chart or map, the compass, a pair of compasses, and, in the case of longer distances, a quadrant, sextant or theodolite, with a piece of paper and pencil, were all that were necessary to turn an engine into a land-ship, one choosing the lines that ran nearest the direction of one's course, whenever they ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... mistake. I'd have trusted that youngster of a third officer anywhere. He was only eighteen, but he could navigate better than the captain. Didn't he fetch the atoll after eighteen days in the longboat? No standard compasses, and you know what a small-boat horizon is, with a big sea, for a sextant. He died, but the dying course he gave me held good, so that I fetched the atoll the very next day after I ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... astronomical observations either the sextant or a theodolite was used. The theodolite employed was a light 3 Vernier instrument by Carey Porter, intended for sledging work. This instrument was fairly satisfactory, although possibly rigidity had been sacrificed to ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... a couple of boxes of food and bottles of drinking fluid, a sextant, a cronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll in the motion of the ship, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon a line, and ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... have till I'm a skipper, and then I'll bear up alongside some pretty, decent lass, like yourself, Christie, and we'll sail in company all our lives, let the wind blow high or low." Such is the gracious Flucker become in his twentieth year. Last voyage, with Christie's aid, he produced a sextant of his own, and "made it twelve o'clock" (with the sun's consent, I hope), and the eyes of authority fell upon him. So, who knows? perhaps he may one day, sail a ship; and, if he does, he will be prouder and happier than if we made ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... a moment, Mr. Burns motioned the crew to leave the cabin, but he detained the two eldest men to stay with the captain while he went on deck with his sextant to "take the sun." It was getting toward noon and he was anxious to obtain a good observation for latitude. When he returned below to put his sextant away he found that the two men had retreated out into the lobby. Through the open door he had a view of the captain lying easy against ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Wilson's Promontory in 38 degrees 56 minutes south, Lieutenant Grant in 39 degrees 17 minutes, and Mr. Black in 39 degrees 8 minutes. As Mr. Bass's latitude is by computation from the whale boat, I think a preference may be given to Lieutenant Grant's position, as he had the advantage of a good sextant." P.G.K.) Having made it I set off in one of my boats early in the morning of the 10th* (* Grant now abandons the plan previously used of heading each entry in the diary with the date of the day on which it was written, and includes the dates of the various events ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... but I did not tell him so, for such occurrences are taken as part of the day's work, and the sledge he safeguarded was of much more importance, for it held, as part of its load, the Commander's sextant, the mercury, and the coils of piano-wire that were the essential portion of the scientific part of the expedition. My kamiks (boots of sealskin) were stripped off, and the congealed water was beaten out of my bearskin trousers, and with a dry pair of kamiks, we hurried on to overtake ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... be. But who knows much about that?" said the second officer, setting his sextant. "You say we're slumbering over a volcano. I daresay we are. It's more or less what we're paid to do, and take all risks. Things ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... in one of Mr. Codrington's boxes, a small sextant for me, which, being packed with the Thomas a Kempis, I think may have been your brother's. Do you really mean this for me too? If so, I shall value it scarcely less than the book. Indeed, I think that, divided as I ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... new life, together with the use of a pocket sextant, prompted him to make various experiments for himself. The only sources from which he could obtain helpful information, however, were some cheap elementary books on mechanics and optics which he procured from the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; these he studied and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... a bit chesty the first day that he was ordered to shoot the sun," Dave laughed. "Dig took the sextant, and made a prize shot, or thought he did. After he had got the sun, plumb at noon, he lowered the instrument and made his reading most carefully. Then he went into the chart room, and got busy with his ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... navigators. He summoned thither astronomers and cartographers and skilled seamen, while he caused stouter and larger vessels to be built for the express purpose of exploration. He perfected the astrolabe (the clumsy predecessor of the modern sextant) by which the latitude could be with some accuracy determined; and he equipped all his ships with the compass, by which their steering was entirely determined. He brought from Majorca (which, as we have seen, was the ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... reading the angle A C B alone, as such point might be amywhere on the circumference of a circle of which A B was the chord. The usual and more accurate method of determining the position of a floating object from the object, itself, or from a boat alongside, is by taking angles with a sextant, or box-sextant, between three fixed points on shore in two operations. Let A B C, Fig. 41, be the three fixed points on shore, the positions of which are measured and recorded upon an ordnance map, or checked if they are already there. Let ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... To arrange an instrument for use and observation; as, to adjust a sextant, or the escapement of a chronometer. To set the frame of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... tandem. In traveling, the men were accustomed to hold on to the back of the sledge, never going in front of the team, and often took off their heavy overcoats and threw them on the load. When taking observations with the sextant, Lieutenant Lockwood generally reclined on the snow, while Sergeant Brainerd called time and made notes, as shown in our illustration. When further progress northward was barred by open water, and the party almost miraculously escaped drifting into the Polar sea, Lieutenant Lockwood ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... of Mr. Bynoe, surgeon; Mr. Forsyth, mate; George Knox, Robert Gower, and William Willing, seamen; John Brown, and Richard Martin, marines. Besides provisions for six days, and arms, we had with us the following instruments: large sextant, small sextant, artificial horizon, chronometer, two compasses, spyglass, watch, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... November, 1572, Tycho noticed an unfamiliar bright star in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and continued to observe it with a sextant. It was a very brilliant object, equal to Venus at its brightest for the rest of November, not falling below the first magnitude for another four months, and remaining visible for more than a year afterwards. Tycho wrote a little ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... Muecke continued, and whenever he happens to speak of this sailing ship he grows warmer. One notices the passion for sailing which this seaman has, for he was trained on a sailing ship and had won many prizes in the regattas at Kiel. "But we had hardly any instruments," he narrated, "we had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an old 'Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... competent to the ordinary duties of his command; and it was no surprise to me when the first storm that we encountered drove us completely out of our course, nor was I much astonished that the captain was for some days, partly from fright and partly from drink, incapable of using his sextant to ascertain the position of the ship. One night we were awakened by a tremendous shock; and, to spare you the details of a shipwreck, which have nothing to do with my story, we found ourselves when day broke fast on a coral reef, about a mile from an island of no great size, and out of ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... measured the inclination with a sextant and artificial horizon, just as you take the height of the sun ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... to find my latitude, by "bringing down the sun" with the sextant; and was taught the bearings and deviation of the compass, as well as the mastery of the log-line and other ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a big ugly man, with large mouth and receding forehead. He asked to see all our curiosities, as the watch, revolver, breech-loading rifle, sextant. I gave him a lecture on the evil of selling his people, and he wished me to tell all the other ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... natives. He told her of his visit to the missionary bark, the Star of Hope, which was then in port at Apia. He was shown into their chart room and looked at their instruments, upon which he remarked, "I am a better Christian than you are, for you have two chronometers and a sextant, while I have only my belief in God and an old clock." When asked why he didn't take a sheep or some chickens along with him to eat as a relief from his constant diet of canned goods, he said, "You can't kill a fellow-passenger. Out in the great stillness you get fond even of ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... old seaworthy craft was hauled many a load of treasure, for the gold-hungry prospector without sextant and chain surveyed the fastnesses of the hills as well as the illimitation of the prairies, and a care-taking government made a way to his camp to send him his mail. Express companies joined their traffic ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... this you know too, no doubt) to Dollond's, the mathematical instrument maker's, last Monday, to buy that part of his outfit. His sextant (which is about the size and shape of a cocked hat), on being applied to his eye, entirely concealed him. Not the faintest vestige of the distinguished officer behind it was perceptible to the human vision. All through the City, people turned round and stared at him with the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... A clever man like you ought to be able to pick up a bit of navigation in a few lessons. While our boats keep together (as, please God, they will to the end) it wouldn't be a bad notion if you dropped alongside just before midday for a morning call, and I'll learn you how to handle a sextant and prick down a reckoning. . . . It'll be sociable, too. . . . Yes, I'll signal the time to you: but, to be ready for it, you might set your watch by my chronometer here. . . . I wonder, now,' he inquired oddly, 'if you've forgot to wind ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cramped quarters, Malone's room proved delightful. Three glass ports admitted light. A table in the center of the room spread over with a Mercator's projection showed that Malone dutifully pricked the Vulcan's course on the chart, although it was not required of him. A sextant and quadrant told the American that the stolid Briton worked out his own reckonings. The sight of these things filled the boy with a respect for the uncouth fellow. He understood how doggedly Malone must have labored to acquire mastery over the instruments of navigation. Beyond ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Bowhead saloon, he craved a return to a solid diet, so for several minutes he lay supine, conjuring in his agile brain ways and means of supplying this need in the absence of ready cash. "I'll have to hock my sextant," was the conclusion at which he presently arrived. Then he commenced to heave and surge until presently he found himself clear of the blankets and seated in his underclothes on the side of the bed. Here, he indulged ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... camp every day came the ascertaining, by boiling a thermometer, of the altitude of the station above the sea-level; of the latitude of the station by the meridian altitude of the star taken with a sextant; and of the compass variation by azimuth. Occasionally there was the fixing of certain crucial stations, at intervals of sixty miles or so, by lunar observations, or distances of the moon either from the sun or from certain given stars, for determining the longitude, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... what Chips Akers told me before he died, after the loss of the Southern Cross, I'm not so sure this devil's-admiral talk is all folderol. Chips couldn't tell much before he went under, but the Southern Cross was boarded by the Devil's Admiral sure enough—didn't they find a sextant out of her ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... coasting voyages about the islands, and of having often slept in the same tent with him. He knew the names of all Cook's company, and could recollect the particular pursuits of each officer. To describe the manner in which Cook had observed the height of the sun, he asked for a sextant, placed himself in a stooping position, and looking fixedly upon an angle, often called with a ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... hold of a nice plump little boy or two, with plenty o' meat to him, that's what they like best; and if it happens to be night-time, there's a lot of queer ones with 'em up there, and all sorts of queer noises—you ask the sextant over there about it—he's heard 'em; and if you should just happen to be around when Mr. Punch climbs down off of this here perch, you'd better look out; for he's just as likely as not to snatch you up and ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... passion Without a compass or chart, But the glow of your eye shows the sun is high, By the sextant of my heart. I know we are nearing the tropics By the languor that round us lies, And the smile on your mouth says the course is south And ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and thumb-worn, paper-covered ledger that was the log of the Charming Lass and had been the log of the old May Schofield for ten years before she went down. It was the one thing he had saved. He had been on deck, taken his sextant observation, and just completed ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... nor sextant, To direct him o'er the sea: Ere 't was known that he was extant, At his widow's home ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... ocean and across it, while at her utmost speed she marked with her keel still slowly the sea that carried her. On the forty-third day from land,—a long time to be at sea alone,—the sky being beautifully clear and the moon being "in distance" with the sun, I threw up my sextant for sights. I found from the result of three observations, after long wrestling with lunar tables, that her longitude by observation agreed within five miles ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... cloud the average velocity of thirty miles per hour, its altitude was determined by the sextant at twelve miles, and we think under-estimated. While measuring, the author's attention was drawn to the fact, that although it appeared equally dense above and below, yet its middle part was the brightest, and as there was only a faint glimmer ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... then took us a few yards into the scrub to look for the saddlebags, and told us to look about for a broken twig, growing over a thick bush; the place was found, but the saddlebags were gone; on searching under the bush among the leaves, the horizon glass of a sextant was found, a strong proof that Jackey ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... were taken out of the packages and appropriated for future purposes. The instruments with which all his observations had been made throughout a series of discoveries extending over seven years—aneroid barometers, compasses, thermometers, the sextant and other things, have gone on a new series of travels, to incur innumerable risks of loss, whilst one only of his thermometers comes ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... length in front of him, he was far enough from romance. He was seventy years old, he weighed over two hundred pounds, his big head was covered with a shock of grizzled red hair; his pleasures consisted in polishing his old sextant and playing on a small mouth-harmonicon. As to his vices, it was no secret that he kept a fat black bottle in the chimney-closet in his own room; added to this, he swore strange oaths about his grandmother's ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... attention, however, to anything I saw or heard, leaving them to believe, if they pleased, that I regarded their behaviour as a simple ebullition of high spirits at the prospect of a little recreation ashore; and passing my sextant and other paraphernalia carefully down into the boat, quickly followed them and gave the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the speed of about four miles an hour. Mrs. Seagrave, wrapped up in a cloak, was seated upon one of the arm-chests near the stern of the ship, her husband and children were all with her enjoying the fine weather, when Captain Osborn, who had been taking an observation of the sun with his sextant, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... again confined to his cot. For several days, owing to a cloudy sky, no observation had been taken. Owen had one evening entered the cabin shortly before the time for taking a lunar observation, in order to ascertain the longitude. Mr Grey had just before gone on deck with his sextant. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... man, with an open, intelligent expression of countenance, stood aft, sextant in hand, prepared to take a meridional altitude. Near him was his second mate, Leonard Champion, with two boys, one of whom also ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... days, too, which only served to make more golden the sun-kissed ones; days when no observations could be taken with the sextant, to the huge disgust of the officer in charge of such work; days when the distant mountains loomed spectre-like through the mist, their sharp outlines vignetted into the sky. Occasionally the fog ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... would be, occasionally, a quivering of the whole mass, which showed that it was floating on the water. It was also growing warmer and warmer every day, which was a favorable symptom. If I had known how to use the sextant or quadrant, I could have settled the ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... others, such things as sketch-hooks, pencils, some useful tools; and one of my greater friends, who was well off, gave me a first-rate spy-glass; while my kind master called me into his study, and showed me a serviceable sextant. "There, Ralph, I hope that, as you are going to sea, you will endeavour to acquire all the information in your power respecting nautical matters, even though you may not ultimately follow a sea life as your profession. Of course, you will fit yourself to ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the course a portion of each second period will be devoted to handling the sextant, work with charts, taking sights, etc. In short, every effort will be made to duplicate, as nearly as possible, navigating conditions on board ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... dead-beat, the duplex, the remontoir. Provisions for the variation of temperature were introduced. It was brought to perfection eventually by Harrison and Arnold, in their hands becoming an accurate measure of the flight of time. To the invention of the chronometer must be added that of the reflecting sextant by Godfrey. This permitted astronomical observations to be made, notwithstanding ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... directed to work out the proposed course of the ship on the charts in the cabin and to give the necessary orders to the other watch on deck, who were to carry them into effect as the ship steamed along, with the aid of sextant, compass, wheel, engine-room telegraph, lead and log-line. As all possessed some knowledge of the sea, and had experience in navigating, this work did not prove as difficult as it undoubtedly would to anyone entirely devoid ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife |
