The _Boston News-Letter_, July 16, 1716, has the following advertisement: "A Parcel of Mathematical Instruments, viz: Quadrants, Meridian Compasses, all sorts of Rules, black lead Pencils, and brass Ring Dials, etc. To be sold by Publick Vendue at the Crown Coffee House in King's Street, Boston, on Thursday next." The same issue has the advertisement of "William Walker in Merchants Row, near the Swing Bridge," who had quadrants for sale. In looking back and noting the slow process of perfecting all nautical instruments, the wonder is how the old ships were navigated through distant seas without greater loss of life and vessels. The dangers were real during our commercial-marine activities following the period of the Revolution and the early nineteenth century, as attested by reference to old newspapers and letters, and to such records as the Diary of Rev. William Bentley of Salem, where nearly every Sunday some of his parishioners asked for prayers for friends at sea or for the loss of husband, son or brother. The shipmasters of Salem, Boston, Providence, New York and Baltimore, undertaking distant voyages, had few good charts--none for the new regions they visited--they had no chronometers, few had sextants, and their compasses were frequently unreliable. And yet these men--most of them were scarcely past their majority in years--with the courage and enthusiasm of youth, in ships filled with valuable cargoes, entrusted to their care by wealthy owners, sailed into uncharted seas, visited unknown lands, and, all the while rarely reported, finally came safely back, to their everlasting credit and the enrichment of the country. We do not know exactly what instruments the old shipmasters carried with them on these voyages, but we do know that they were comparatively few and very inferior to those in use today. An idea of the paucity in some instances may be obtained from the story of the ship _Hannah_, condemned at Christiansand in 1810, in the protest of American shipmasters which is now preserved in the New Haven Historical Society collections. It reads: "We, the undersigned masters of American vessels now in the port of Christiansand, having heard with astonishment that one of the principal charges against the American brig _Hannah_, from Boston, bound direct to Riga, and condemned at the prize court at this place, is as follows,--that the said court have pronounced it absolutely impossible to cross the Atlantic without a chart or sextant. We therefore feel fully authorized to assert that we have frequently made voyages from America without the above articles, and we are fully persuaded that every seaman with common nautical knowledge can do the same."