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My favourite dead reckoning anecdote[1] was there was this British naval captain who found himself in the Atlantic just a bit south-west of the Canary Islands i
by seanhunter 1y ago
My favourite dead reckoning anecdote[1] was there was this British naval captain who found himself in the Atlantic just a bit south-west of the Canary Islands in a lifeboat. He knew that the ocean currents would be against him and too strong to row against, so he set off for South America and made it there by rowing with the current and using dead reckoning to course correct.
[1] And this is from memory and a bunch of googling around hasn’t turned it up so pardon me if I get some details wrong.
- cgriswald 1y agoWilliam McVicar https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-capt-william-mcvicar-1245688.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-capt-will...
- seanhunter 1y agoBadass. Thank you. It's an incredible story and deserves to be told. 1500miles at sea in an overloaded open lifeboat using stellar navigation and managed to save more than half of the people aboard. So they were sailing rather than rowing but other than that I had remembered it substantially correctly.
- nicwolff 1y ago"McVicar, a non-swimmer"!!!
- lmm 1y agoTransatlantic by dead reckoning alone sounds impossibly difficult. Captain Bligh navigating 3500 nautical miles from Tahiti to Kupang in an open boat after being mutinied against was a celebrated feat of navigation, and he had the aid of a compass and a pocket watch.
- mannykannot 1y agoSo long as one can see the sun and stars reasonably frequently, I imagine a competent navigator could estimate his latitude and know which way is West accurately enough to stay in the trade winds and make landfall along Brazil's coast, which I suppose was McVicar's only hope, given the extreme shortage of water and rations.