and depends on the skill of the individual steersman. Looking at the compass-card, in steady weather, a course may seem very closely followed; perhaps the needle's end may not be a hundredth part of an inch (on the average) from the position it should have. But a hundredth part of an inch on the circumference of the compass-card would correspond to a considerable deviation in the course of a run of twenty or thirty knots; and there is nothing to prevent the errors so arising from accumulating in a long journey until a ship might be thirty or forty miles from her estimated place. To this may be added the circumstance that the direction of the needle is different in different parts of the earth. In some places it points to the east of the north, in others to the west. And, although the actual "variation of the compass," as this peculiarity is called, is known in a general way for all parts of the earth, yet such knowledge has no claim to actual exactness. There is also an important danger, as recent instances have shown, in the possible change of the position of the ship's compass, on account of iron in her cargo.
But a far more important cause of error, in determinations merely depending on the log-book, is that arising from uncertainty as to the ship's rate of progress. The log-line gives only a rough idea of the ship's rate at the time when the log is cast;[1] and, of course, a ship's rate does not remain constant, even when she is under steam alone. Then, again, currents carry the ship along sometimes with considerable rapidity; and the log-line affords no indication of their action: while no reliance can be placed on the estimated rates, even of known currents. Thus the distance made on any course may differ considerably from the estimated distance; and, when several days' sailing are dealt with, an error of large amount may readily accumulate.
For these and other reasons, a ship's captain places little reliance on what is called "the day's work"—that is, the change in the ship's position from noon to noon as estimated from the compass-courses entered in the log-book, and the distances supposed to be run on these courses. It is absolutely essential that such estimates should be carefully made, because, under favorable conditions of weather, there may be no other means of guessing at the ship's position. But the only really reliable way of determining a ship's place is by astronomical observations. It is on this account that the almanac published by the Admiralty, in which the position and apparent motions of the celestial bodies are indicated, four or five years in advance, is called, par excel-
- ↑ The log is a flat piece of wood of quadrantal shape, so loaded at the rim as to float with the point (that is, the centre of the quadrant) uppermost. To this a line about 300 yards long is fastened. The log is thrown overboard, and comes almost immediately to rest on the surface of the sea, the line being suffered to run freely out. By marks on the log-line divided into equal spaces, called knots, of known length, and by observing how many of these run out, while the sand in a half-minute hour-glass is running, the ship's rate of motion is roughly inferred. The whole process is necessarily rough, since the line cannot even be straightened.
