Old-Time Nautical Instruments BY JOHN ROBINSON [Illustration] BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 1921 ONE HUNDRED COPIES DEPRINTED FROM Old-Time New England APRIL, 1921 [Illustration: SHIP GRAND TURK, 1786] OLD-TIME NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS BY JOHN ROBINSON _Curator of the Marine Room, Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass._ What sort of instruments did the Colonial ship-masters carry? What did they have on the _Mayflower_? What did Columbus use? And, to come down to comparatively recent times, what instruments were available and were actually used on the vessels during the commercial-marine activities following the American Revolution and up to the time of the appearance of steamships? These questions are often asked, not only by landsmen but by seafaring men as well. The ship-master of today uses instruments so different from those of Colonial times, or even of the earlier years of the nineteenth century, that unless he has a penchant for research he knows nothing about the earlier ones and certainly not how to use them if by chance they come to his notice. Holding in his hand a Davis quadrant, the skilful navigator of Salem's last square-rigger, the ship _Mindoro_, which passed out of service in 1897, said to the writer:--"I have no idea how to use it and I do not believe that there is a ship-master sailing out of Boston today who does." The Davis quadrant was in common use all through the eighteenth century and probably later. It is figured and explained in a book on navigation in 1796. There are two in the Peabody Museum collection in Salem, dated respectively, 1768 and 1773, and an undated one in the collection is certainly older. Only the student of the history of navigation can explain them or their uses. The English navigator, John Davis, the inventor of this quadrant, in his "Seaman's Secrets", printed in 1594, gives a list of instruments which should be taken on ships, but it is to be feared few vessels carried them all or that owners were able to provide them. It included,--sea-compass, cross-staff, chart, quadrant, astrolabe, instrument to test compass variation, horizontal plane sphere, and paradoxical compass. [Illustration: SIXTEENTH CENTURY SPANISH ASTROLABE Full size. From Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.] [Illustration: UNIVERSAL RING-DIAL Diameter 3-1/2 inches. Owned by Mr. Parker Kemble.]