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Subject: Re: Preston's paper on Lewis & Clark's Navigation
From: Fred Hebard (Fred@XXX.XXX)
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 10:40:05 EDT
Bruce,
Thank you for referencing your posts on this. When I examined the
whole thread from the 0208 post, things started to fall into place.
I must reluctantly agree with George Huxtable that Lewis and Clark
indeed were not the greatest navigators. Certainly not as good as
David Thompson and that Australian fellow George referred to not long
ago. In defense of Lewis and Clark, I must point out that they were
doing more than just navigating around the continent. They also were
making extremely extensive and valuable collections of plants, animals
and rocks, recording ethnographic observations on the native Americans,
and acting as ambassadors to the various tribes. They had to haul all
this stuff with them and command the members of their expedition. It
would have been much easier to be a lone explorer, who could travel
light, without personnel squabbles.
Fred
On Saturday, Jun 7, 2003, at 22:31 US/Eastern, Bruce Stark wrote:
> Fred,
>
> Unfortunately I haven't gotten back to Lewis and Clark this year, but
> keep
> hoping to. As to the latitude errors: 5' my elbow! After the Mandan
> Villages it
> was more like half a degree! We discussed this on the list before you
> joined.
> Last August I tried to show why the smaller errors were not
> surprising, and
> gave a definite reason for that huge error. That post, which included
> the
> numbers from the Journals, is at:
>
> http://www.irbs.com/lists/navigation/0208/0004.html
>
> Gary Moulton's The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark is the place
> to get
> any data you want. It's all there, and it's in paperback now.
>
> Preston was trying to understand the nautical astronomy of that era in
> terms
> of twentieth century celestial. Still, it's a valuable contribution. We
> discussed his paper on the list some time back. My post is at:
>
> http://www.irbs.com/lists/navigation/0207/0020.html
>
> Bruce
>
>
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